Revised recipes | Slow Food Fast

Another Reason to Make Your Own Salad Dressings

Posted on November 4, 2009 by DebbieN

My husband came home this weekend loaded down with leftovers from a brunch he’d helped set up. Among the cartons of pasta salad and regular salad and dubious mass-market hummus and two–two? really?–homemade onion pies was a jug of something reddish. It turned out to be more than a quart of prepared raspberry vinaigrette, the kind of thing a caterer would pick up at a bulk commodities store. More than we would ever use in a year, but let it pass. He meant well.

So we found space for most of the stuff in the fridge, threw out the hummus because we didn’t know if it had been dipped into or not, and then there was this jug of vinaigrette hanging out on the counter. I took a look at the ingredients. Canola oil (boring but expected), sugar (enhhh–not a fan of sweet salad dressings, personally), salt, distilled vinegar, raspberry extract was somewhere down in the lower middle, more for color than flavor no doubt, paprika extractives (so much easier than actual paprika?)…yada yada yada…some kind of starch and emulsifiers to keep the oil and vinegar more or less together…polyethylene glycol…

Bleagggh. PEG? As my college lab partner once remarked, in a toney City Line (Philadelphia) accent, “It smells so….bio-laahhhgical.” And it does.

Not to mention the “nutrition” counts–and here I mean the sodium count per serving, which alone, minus any actual salad fixings, comes to 240 mg. It’s not so hard to see why chain restaurant salads typically hover above 500 mg sodium and frequently up to 900 mg.

So a couple of suggestions:

1. Make your own salad dressings–it’s quick and they’ll be fresher. You don’t need exact recipes, do you? Try a few of these.

2. Don’t automatically add salt–get the majority of your dressing flavors from the real ingredients. The satisfaction of a salad dressing comes from a combination of tart and savory ingredients to startle and intrigue the palate and make the freshness of the salad itself more apparent, so start with that. Flavor your dressing with garlic or shallots, lemon juice or vinegar, mustard or sharp cheese, olive or walnut oil, maybe yogurt or buttermilk, herbs, etc., but flavor it, don’t salt it. Real ingredients are also less likely to suffer flavor fatigue–salt’s a moving target that most people stop being able to taste when they eat a lot of it habitually (see the Salt Rant).

2b. If you’re following a recent cookbook or food magazine recipe, there’s sure to be a routine, unthinkingly added teaspoon of salt called for in just about every recipe. That’s much more than you really need to enhance a salad or make the dressing piquant. But those recipes are based on restaurant think, where salt is the cheap substitute for the expensive ingredients that need to be stretched. You don’t have that problem–you’re not making vats of bleu cheese dressing on a shoestring budget, you’re making dinner.

So leave out the salt, mix everything else together, and taste.

3. Time is your friend. You can make a basic vinaigrette right at the table–a dollop of mustard, a few spoonfuls of red wine vinegar or lemon juice, a pinch of salt if you must, and a couple or so spoonfuls of olive oil whisked in. Maybe a few herbs or a clove of garlic to boost it, and cracked black peppercorns over the top. Or nasturtiums.

But if the dressing–a yogurt or buttermilk-based one, say– is mostly about herbs, garlic, onion, shallot, scallions, bleu cheese or the like, let the dressing sit awhile to develop. If you make a yogurt/buttermilk/herb and garlic ranch-style dressing a day ahead, it’ll be much stronger and also more integrated after a night in the fridge. Right before serving, taste a bit of lettuce in the dressing and see what you think. If you still feel like salt is genuinely missing after you taste it in action, add a pinch or two. Not more. You can always add more to your own serving at the table if you’re craving salt for its own sake, and you’ll have the advantage of being able to taste it because the crystals will be on the surface of the food, where your tastebuds can get to them easily.

4. Unless it’s just olive oil and red wine vinegar, don’t toss the dressing in before serving, let people dress their own. Not everybody likes or can tolerate every dressing, and everyone’s got their own right amount. If you have to dress the salad ahead for a banquet setup, do it lightly. Less is more.

Filed under: DASH Diet, Dips, frugality, nutrition, Revised recipes, salads, sauces and condiments, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, low sodium, nutrition, recipes | Comments Off on Another Reason to Make Your Own Salad Dressings

A Bowl of Dough in a Book

Posted on September 14, 2009 by DebbieN

For anyone who’s read my previous post, A Bowl of Dough in the Fridge, a quick recommendation:

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, is gaining a big following among people who’ve tried out the recipes. This bread book, developed by an avid home baker and a professional pastry chef, uses the same basic strategy I do, but they’ve worked out quite a number of variations on a couple of master recipes, and they’ve come out with a general formula that works pretty well.

They have a basic white boule with a crunchy crust–something to shape a variety of classic ways, French through Italian, with or without olives or olive oil. They have several whole wheat and pumpernickel and rye versions with a thinner shiny crackled crust. They have challah AND brioche, and they have classic bagels AND Montreal sweet bagels. And they have chocolate babka. And they have demonstration photos and tips at the right points in the recipes to be helpful.

Among the differences between their basic white boule recipe and my typical dough are much more yeast for the amount of flour and water–they use a packet and a half for 6 cups of flour and 3 of water–and a lot more salt as well–a tablespoon and a half. The initial rise is faster–about 2 hours instead of 5 or so–but I’m not sure what the true effect of the salt is other than taste and reflexive habit–François is CIA-trained, and that school tends to emphasize salt, judging from the chefs who’ve graduated from there and gotten into print.

The other factor that’s different is they don’t call for kneading at all–once you’ve stirred the flour into the liquids and everything’s more or less uniform, that part’s done. Rise and chill.

That’s solid enough for the chewy hard-crusted no-knead bread style of bread, but will it work for challah, which usually calls for extensive kneading to develop the classic long feathery crumb? Inquiring minds want to know.

So I’m going to try their white boule and their challah (though here I’ll cut the salt back for my own taste) and let you know how it goes. I’m looking forward especially to see if the challah crumb can really be achieved without the 10-minute knead and multiple rises.

Filed under: books, breads, cooking, Revised recipes | Tagged: artisan breads, babka, bagels, baguette, baking, boulangerie, bread, challah, ciabatta, cookbooks, couronne, dough, European breads, foccaccia, pain d'epi, yeast | Comments Off on A Bowl of Dough in a Book

Dolmas by microwave

Posted on August 7, 2009 by DebbieN

When we first moved to Pasadena 10 years ago, one of my favorite places for Sunday dinners out was Pita! Pita!, a family-run Lebanese restaurant in the “Old Town” section of the city. One of the reasons I loved it was the usual reason to love middle eastern food: the mostly vegetarian mezze were wonderful, and the main dishes were knockouts. Long-cooked lamb, roast chicken, fish grilled or under tehina sauce, vegetable stews with a surprising bite of pineapple in them. Even though I couldn’t eat the meat dishes, I could certainly appreciate them by smell. Everything was modestly priced and generous along with it.

The other reason I loved it was that the family that ran it had made their restaurant the kind of place families went for an old-country kind of Sunday dinner with all the uncles and aunts. Pita! Pita! was housed in one of a row of narrow spaces along Fair Oaks, converted from what I think was once a schoolhouse. The narrowness didn’t stop them from putting a couple of large old-fashioned dining room tables in with the smaller ones for couples. They treated their customers like family, you could sit and eat at a leisurely pace and converse, and we never came away anything less than happy. And certainly never hungry.

Which is why I still miss the place. The family ended up realizing they couldn’t make a go of it without charging astronomical prices or wearing themselves out and decided instead to run a smaller, cafeteria-style lunch spot with fewer and simpler dishes on the main business street. And I can’t blame them at all. The food they serve now–more mezze and fast grilled items–is still as good, but the long-cooked family-style dishes and the leisurely Sunday nights I’ll keep having to miss.

I grew up with hummus, tehina, felafel and tabbouleh, which are Israeli standards too and popular among Jews in the U.S. My mother made them from the dried mixes and cans of prepared tehina when they finally became available in our supermarket. In Israel I learned to make them from scratch, but one thing I didn’t know how to make was stuffed grape leaves or dolmas. My sister had married someone who did and on one weekend visit she showed me the ropes.

I love dolmas but they are not quick to make, not at all. We rolled a loooooottt of grape leaves that afternoon (her husband had bought the econo-jar at a local Arab market), and stuck them tight in a pot, plated down so they didn’t float and unwind, and boiled them with lemon and olive oil for more than an hour. They were wonderful but you would never want to do it on a regular basis!

In the spirit of “what can you cook in a microwave instead of the regular way,” I have gone back and made dolmas at home–in a microwave. It works! You can cook them in a few minutes rather than an hour-plus of boiling and having to top up the water so nothing scorches, and they come out beautifully.

Unfortunately, the microwave, miracle machine though it be, will not help at all with the rolling, which is the hard part. The best I can do is say that microwaving lets you do a few at a time if you feel like it–say, 10-20 dolmas, not 50-100. What you do with the rest of the grape leaves in the econojar is up to you.

Grape leaves come brined in rolls of 20 or so, either a single roll in a skinny jar (Krinos) or a big pickle-jar with four rolls (Cortas, other brands). When you buy them, inspect the rolls and make sure there are no little fluorescent green or yellow spots on them–you’ll know if you see them; capers also get this sometimes. I’m not sure if it’s harmful or not, but I stay away from it. I’d keep the other rolls in the brine in the fridge and make sure to use them up within a month, or else take the rolls and freeze them in ziplock sandwich bags with the air squeezed out–and use them within a couple of months so they don’t get freezer burn.

Dolmas in the Microwave

Roll of brined grape leaves ~ 20-30
1 c raw rice (not “minute rice” or parboiled) or bulgur (cracked wheat or tabbouleh grain, plain)
1 med/big ripe tomato
1/4 onion or 1-2 scallions
1 T dill (a few good sprigs fresh is best if you have fresh)
several sprigs or small handful fresh curly parsley
juice of 1/2 lemon
olive oil and the other half lemon for cooking

1. Partially or almost-completely cook the rice or tabbouleh in the microwave: put it in a pyrex bowl or microwaveable container, cover with ~1/2-3/4 inch of water, microwave covered on HIGH for ~2-2.5 minutes, let sit and absorb the water several minutes until nearly done, drain excess moisture.

2. While the grain is cooking, rinse off the roll of grape leaves and then soak them in a big Pyrex bowl to get rid of some of the salt. Change the water once. [Note: traditional recipes say soak the grape leaves an hour in cold water. Some others say pour boiling water over them and let them soak. If you want to split the difference in a microwaveable way, you could rinse them, put them in the Pyrex bowl with water to cover, nuke 2-3 minutes on HIGH and then change the water.]

3. Blend the tomato, onion or scallion, herbs and lemon juice in a food processor and mix with the drained rice or bulgur–include the tomato juice. Let cool enough to handle.

4. Stuff the grape leaves–this is the hard part. Take a stack of grape leaves and drain them on a plate. Cut off the stems carefully without tearing the leaves. Lay out one leaf vein-side up and stem end toward you. Put a spoonful of the filling–not more–on the leaf right above where the stem joint was. Roll the leaf over it–tightly but carefully so you don’t tear–and tuck the side leaves over it halfway through, then keep rolling away from you. Place each stuffed grape leaf, flap edge down, in a tight layer in a microwaveable container or dish.

5. When you’re done rolling (nothing says you have to do the whole thing in one go if you get sick of it after 10 or you just want 10, just put the leftover filling and the grape leaves in the fridge) pour a little water carefully over the layer of grape leaf rolls. Maybe a quarter-inch of water. Squeeze the other half lemon over the whole thing, and drizzle a little olive oil over it– maybe a couple of tablespoons worth. Cover the dish or container and microwave on high 2-3 minutes for 10, maybe 3-4 minutes for 20+. Check one for doneness–careful, it’ll be pretty hot–you want the leaves tender and the grain cooked through. Maybe go another minute if you need to.

Let them cool and chill in the fridge. Serve with tzatziki, raita, tehina, or other yogurt-based dip.

Filed under: cooking, Eating out, Grains, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: appetizers, dolmades, dolmas, Greek food, Israeli food, Lebanese food, mezze, microwave cooking, slow food, stuffed grape leaves | Comments Off on Dolmas by microwave

“High Protein Bran Muffin”–A good idea gone bad?

Posted on July 28, 2009 by DebbieN

This is what’s wrong with American thinking today:

That muffins are healthy, or as in the example below, “healthful”
That bran muffins are really healthy and therefore can be eaten big
That such healthy muffins should be eaten as a source of protein.
That muffins this perfect can and perhaps even should be eaten as a substitute for meals.

Exhibit A, from a recent “Culinary SOS” recipe request column of the LA Times Food Section.

Dear SOS: Have you ever tasted the muffins at —–‘s Bakery? They are huge, delicious, healthful and so satisfying. There is a particular favorite of mine, a high protein muffin that, when eaten, makes one glow inside and feel healthy all day…
–Shirley

Dear Shirley: These generously sized muffins pack a medley of flavors and textures in every bite. A batch’ll go quickly — they make for a fun, quick breakfast or perfect snack.

Well. Can’t wait. Let’s take a look at the ingredients list as given in SOS.

High protein muffin
Total time: 45 minutes plus cooling time Makes 14 muffins

1 (12-ounce) can frozen apple or white grape fruit juice concentrate
2 1/4 cups wheat bran
1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) flour
3 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons canola oil
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup shelled pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup flaxseeds
1/2 cup coconut
1 1/2 cups granola
2 cups raisins

I’ll skip the instructions–they’re involved and painful. All I’ll say is, the recipe involves boiling down Ingredient #1 (and wasn’t that a shock in a health muffin recipe) and still throwing some of it out.

Now the nutrition. I have to say I’m tempted to use the ingredient list as a small practical quiz to see if anyone can ballpark the calories, fat, carbs and sodium per serving from it. Anyone? Anyone? No? OK, then. Fasten your seatbelt. Or perhaps just your belt.

Each muffin: 515 calories; 11 grams protein; 54 grams carbohydrates; 9 grams fiber; 32 grams fat; 5 grams saturated fat; 62 mg. cholesterol; 742 mg. sodium.

Now wait a minute. 500+ calories? for a muffin? 700+ mg sodium? 32 g fat? For that much fat and salt you could eat a chunk of cheddar almost the size of a deck of cards. Straight.

Anyway, this is clearly one overloaded muffin, with tons of expensive extras. Heavy too–or why the 7 teaspoons of leavening for a single batch? And the irony is, after all that stuff, it still only delivers 11 g protein per muffin. You could get that with a large glass of skim milk.

But you know what’s really sad about this muffin recipe? It’s not alone. Even the classic Weight Watchers Cookbook recipe for bran muffins still weighs in at 300-plus calories per and 500-plus mg. sodium.

What gives? Should we simply not eat muffins? Can a bran muffin recipe ever be actually delicious AND low-fat, low-salt, moderate-carb, and perhaps, dare we dream it, less than 200 calories per, so you don’t feel stupid not having asked for something a little more actively delicious for the same calories–maybe a croissant or a slice of flourless chocolate cake instead? With, obviously, raspberry coulis?

How would you go about it? Maybe it would be better to go with something like the cake-style gingerbread recipe in the Silver Palate Cookbook–makes 12 servings with a lot less starch (1 2/3 c. flour), no nuts and seeds and extras, only one egg, only 1 1/4 t. baking soda, a bunch of gingerbread spices, 1/2 c. oil you can skip in favor of applesauce with no problems at all and a huge cut in calories, half a cup each of sugar and molasses or honey, some boiling water right before baking, and that’s pretty much it. You can even microwave it for about 5-7 minutes at half power instead of baking it conventionally.

Now granted, it’s not bran–but it could be at least whole wheat without ruining the aesthetic. It’s not 500 calories a square either–by my reckoning more like 120 in the applesauce version, and something like 150-200 mg sodium. And no one expects it to substitute in for a meal’s worth of fiber and protein, but with raisins and whole wheat flour, it would probably have 4-5 g fiber and you could always serve it with skim milk.

If you’ve convinced yourself that nothing but a “high-protein” muffin will do, and simply drinking some milk with it isn’t glamorous enough, throw in a packet of nonfat powdered dry milk. But really, unless it’s your only meal of the day, you don’t actually need the added protein. Muffins weren’t made to be steak.

Finally, why make huge muffins? Unless you want to end up looking like a Mack Truck, make decent medium-sized or cupcake-sized muffins, and if you’re still hungry afterward, eat an apple. And drink a glass of milk.

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Grains, Revised recipes | Tagged: bakery, DASH Diet, hidden calories, hidden salt, muffins, recipe request, Silver Palate | Comments Off on “High Protein Bran Muffin”–A good idea gone bad?

“But it’s organic! But it’s vegetarian!”

Posted on July 14, 2009 by DebbieN

Vegetarian and organic foods are gaining popularity in supermarkets around the country–it’s been happening for at least a decade. Vegetarian- and organic-seeking customers assume they’re getting something closer to fresh if it’s labeled vegetarian or organic, and most of them also assume that vegetarian automatically means healthy. So, apparently, do nutrition researchers when they’re not really thinking hard enough.

The American Dietetic Association recently announced–again, updating from 1997–that vegetarian and vegan diets can be healthful at all stages of life from infancy onward and posted suggestions for getting started. Keyword here is “can”.

The idea of easing into a less-meat diet in stages by cooking familiar foods and familiar ingredients as far as possible is understandable. The Vegetarian Nutrition practice group of the ADA is trying to reach people they think are likely to panic at the suggestion of not eating meat. Unfortunately, the suggestions that top the list are mostly for processed meat substitutes, jarred pasta sauces, canned beans, boxed rice mixes and the like, rather than a dietary framework for eating fresh whole-ingredient vegetarian foods.

In the health section of the LA Times online, where I first read about the ADA’s statement last week, many reader comments objected to this approach primarily because the major brands of veggie hot dogs and hamburgers tend to have long, improbable ingredient lists and very high salt. After a casual tour of the sauces-soups-and-rice-mixes section at my local Whole Foods, it’s an objection I second even more strongly.

For several years now I’ve had reservations about the processed food industry’s tendency to throw salt at anything and everything. Vegetarian and organic food is supposed to be better. Fresher, better-tasting, realer, more nutritious, healthier, more responsible for the planet, the animal world, and the customer. In a word, BETTER.

Nice intentions aside, most of the vegetarian and organic products companies these days seem to be trying as hard as they can to keep up with or even surpass the meat-eating Joneses–the big-brand pantry staples from Stouffer’s, Swanson’s, Kraft Foods, Campbell’s, and so on. They’re still claiming the health and planet virtues of vegetarian and organic, but they’re actually processing the hell out of their foods, adding all kinds of laundry-list mystery ingredients, and salting them out of all reason. And health-and-planet-conscious consumers are flocking to them without bothering to look hard at the nutrition labels. How have we come to such a pass? Continue reading →

Filed under: Beans and legumes, cooking, DASH Diet, Food Politics, Grains, high-speed soup, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: American Dietetic Association, convenience foods, meatless cooking, nutrition, nutrition labeling, organic foods, processed, processed food, vegetarian, vegetarian diet, Whole Foods | 4 Comments »

How to Nuke an Eggplant

Posted on July 12, 2009 by DebbieN

After microwaving 10 minutes, the eggplant has collapsed

Eggplant is one of those warm-climate foods. It’s big, cheap, and plentiful, it goes with everything from garlicky oregano-and-fennel laden tomato sauce to nutmeg-tinged custard or cumin/cinnamon-scented Greek and North African dishes, to curries and darkly soy-glazed Chinese and Thai dishes. You can deep-fry it, panfry it, grill it and serve it room-temperature under a glossy layer of olive oil, marinate it, wrap it around other fillings, stuff it, roast it, make spreads with it… There’s even a Greek eggplant “spoon sweet” and at least one eggplant “jam” from Morocco. To say nothing of pink-tinged sour eggplant pickles, one of my favorite additions at the Israeli felafel stands.

The only thing you don’t really want to do with eggplant is eat it raw.

I NEVER bother with the usual cookbook directions for eggplant. All of them slavishly recopy instructions from their predecessors–salt it, drain it, fry it in tons of expensive olive oil, which it will soak up mercilessly, bake it for an hour only to find it still has spongy raw spots… They never bother to update, or even retest, the traditional assumptions that make eggplant such a pain.

You can forget most of that if you just nuke your eggplants first. Most of the stuff people do to their eggplants comes of just trying to get it cooked through. The salt’s to get rid of some of the water; the fat’s to cook it hotter and let the juices steam inside the slices.

Microwaving takes care of both, needs neither fat nor salt, and it’s very quick–10 minutes on HIGH on a pyrex pie plate for 1 or 2 decent-sized eggplants and you’ve got either collapsed whole eggplant(s) ready for baba ghanouj or a fan of slices or a mountain of bite-sized cubes. All of them cooked through and ready to do something more interesting with.

I used to think I was alone in the wilderness on this one, because NO ethnic cookbook–or any other cookbook with eggplant recipes–ever considers the existence of microwaving, much less condones it for cooking actual food. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: aubergine, baba ghanouj, eggplant, eggplant parmigiana, involtini, Mediterranean diet, melanzana, mezze, microwave cooking, microwaved eggplant, Middle Eastern cooking, vegetarian cooking | Comments Off on How to Nuke an Eggplant

Buttermilk ices

Posted on June 24, 2009 by DebbieN

Buttermilk is one of those underappreciated dairy foods, as is the even less well-loved nonfat powdered dry milk. Both are somewhat unappetizing taken straight. A glass of buttermilk, though it has its fans, can taste like liquid cottage cheese, and reconstituted NFPD never quite sheds its dank, sticky chalkiness, especially if you’re attempting to use it in the morning coffee (a desperate we’re-all-out-of-actual-milk substitute that has driven me to Starbucks more than once).

Cookbooks tend to ignore buttermilk and NFPD or else sweep them into baking recipes where they won’t matter much, won’t be recognizable, and certainly won’t dominate the taste. Given how much protein and calcium they contain and how inexpensive they are, that’s kind of a shame.

But treat them right and you get something light, versatile and delicious for dessert. Buttermilk’s actually a little easier to believe in an ice cream-like dessert than NFPD is. Foodie magazines feature lots of lemon buttermilk ice creams this time of year, but they include such odd and unnecessarily rich ingredients as cream cheese to simulate a superpremium ice cream’s texture. Not only is it extremely calorie-dense, it’s really, really expensive. Kind of defeats the purpose of using lowfat buttermilk in the first place.

My version of a lemon buttermilk ice uses NFPD instead of fat to create the microcrystalline structure that keeps it from turning into a huge popsicle. It won’t melt quite the same as ice cream, but it’s packed with flavor and a small portion feels like “enough”, especially with fresh fruit on the side.

NFPD’s stale chalkiness and crumbly texture are not so hard to fix, but I haven’t seen anyone presenting a method for it so I’m doing it here. There are two tricks, both of which can probably help for other NFPD recipes, even savory ones.

First is the taste–in this case, the lemon juice and rind seem to counter it quite successfully, and the juice also seems to help NFPD dissolve more smoothly. Orange juice seems to work also, so maybe it’s the tangy acidity that counteracts the stale milk taste. As long as you’re not heating it up, you don’t run the risk of curdling either.

Second is the clumpiness. There are a couple of Indian recipes where it’s actually a possible advantage–gulab jamun and burfi both seem to take advantage of NFPD’s doughiness when mixed with a scant amount of liquid. But for desserts where you want it to dissolve smoothly, just whiz the dry NFPD by itself in a food processor, or just with sugar, to get it to a fine dust before blending in any liquids.

Lemon Buttermilk Ice (makes about 8 1/3- to 1/2-cup servings)

3.2 oz (91 g) packet nonfat powdered dry milk (or the amount specified on the package for a quart of reconstituted milk)
1/2 c sugar
2 c. lowfat buttermilk–drained a bit if it’s starting to separate
juice and grated peel of a lemon
1/2 t. vanilla or to taste

Grind the NFPD and sugar together in a food processor until they form a very fine powder. Pour in the buttermilk and pulse to get the powder off the bottom of the food processor. Add the lemon juice and peel and the vanilla and blend again. Either pour into an ice cream maker for churning or into a freezer container with a sealable lid and freeze an hour or so. Scrape the frozen crystals off the sides, stir them into the still-liquid part of the buttermilk ice, cover again and refreeze. Do this once or twice more. Serve with fruit.

Filed under: Dairy, DASH Diet, Revised recipes | Tagged: buttermilk, ice cream | Comments Off on Buttermilk ices

Soba sodium revised

Posted on May 6, 2009 by DebbieN

I just actually checked the package labels at Whole Foods–soba noodles from Eden brand run something like 470 mg sodium per serving–about twice what I’d estimated. Udon noodles were something like 650 mg per serving. Why? Why? That’s worse than a can of Campbell’s soup! Whole wheat pastas it is.

Filed under: DASH Diet, Revised recipes | Comments Off on Soba sodium revised

Taking on “Recipes for Health”

Posted on May 2, 2009 by DebbieN

Martha Rose Shulman’s “Recipes for Health” column in the New York Times typically offers quick stir-fry vegetarian fare that anyone can do at home. Shulman is a good and popular cookbook author, and I give her credit for her intentions. But the column reveals some serious flaws in her understanding when it comes to the actual healthiness of the recipes.

First, the recipes never include standard nutritional breakdowns. I wouldn’t expect that for glamor food magazines, but any major newspaper or magazine claiming “healthy” recipes should declare the nutrition stats per serving so people can gauge calories, fats, carbs, fiber, and especially, because we’re not used to thinking consciously about it these days, salt.

And salt is where Shulman’s recipes go seriously wrong. Time after time, they contain surprisingly and unnecessarily high salt per serving. Where does it come from? Take this week’s recipe, “Stir-Fried Snow Peas with Soba”. It’s basically Japanese whole-wheat noodles (soba) with snow peas and tofu in a peanut sauce, and serves four. Seems simple enough, but the ingredients Shulman chooses are hiding an awful lot of extra salt:

* You expect the soy sauce to contain salt. OK. It’s only a tablespoon. But it isn’t the reduced-sodium version–and why isn’t it?–so figure 1200 mg.
* Half a cup of vegetable or other broth–also not specified low-sodium. Figure 250-500 mg sodium; maybe even more.
* Salt “to taste”–TV chefs tend to sprinkle in a pinch or more. Figure 1/8-1/4 teaspoon, 300-600 mg, if you imitate them.
* Peanut butter. Not specified unsalted. Figure 1 tablespoon is 100 mg.
* And then there’s the soba itself. Ordinary Italian-style whole wheat spaghetti or fettucine has almost no sodium in it, just flour and water, but authentic Japanese soba dough contains quite a bit, 250 mg or so per serving. Times four is about 1000 mg.

Grand total for 4 servings: 2300-2800 mg, or 600-700 mg sodium per serving.

If that’s your whole dinner, ok, but most of that sodium could easily be cut without sacrificing taste. Plus, two ounces of snow peas per person isn’t enough to call it vegetabalia and get away with it in my book. You’ll notice that the glossy photo in Shulman’s article shows a generous two snow pea pods, a few slices of radish, and none of the promised cubes of tofu–her version’s a side dish, not a proper meal. Let’s revise this one.

Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Pasta, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: DASH Diet, heart-healthy, hidden salt, low-salt, Martha Rose Shulman, nutrition, Pasta, salt, salt-free cooking | Comments Off on Taking on “Recipes for Health”

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Another Reason to Make Your Own Salad Dressings

A Bowl of Dough in a Book

Dolmas by microwave

“High Protein Bran Muffin”–A good idea gone bad?

“But it’s organic! But it’s vegetarian!”

How to Nuke an Eggplant

Buttermilk ices

Soba sodium revised

Taking on “Recipes for Health”

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