A few weeks ago the Jewish Daily Forward published an essay of mine entitled “Trans Fat: How A Staple of Parve Foods is Hurting Our Waistlines.”  In it, I explained how processed-food manufacturers at the turn of the last century attracted large numbers of new customers from among recent Jewish immigrants with marketing campaigns based on the fact that the partially-hydrogenated (trans) fats in their newly developed shortenings were pareve, or non-dairy.  This allowed traditionally dairy desserts to be made kosher for meat meals.  Procter & Gamble advertised that “The Hebrew Race has been waiting for 4,000 years” for a solution to its shortening problems.  Endorsements were solicited and received from rabbis and other community leaders.  Margarine, Crisco, and non-dairy “whiteners” rapidly supplanted traditional fats to become an integral part of what we now consider traditional kosher cooking.  It isn’t; one thousand years of kitchen wisdom were lost in just two generations. 

In Europe, the fats traditionally used by Jewish cooks included butter and cream for dairy meals, and goose or chicken fat for meat meals.  Jewish communities throughout Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Middle East also used olive oil extensively.  Coconut oil, beef fat, and other less common fats were used as their availability allowed. 

I’m not advocating that we eat desserts like these regularly.  But a single slice once a week?  That’s fine.  What kinds of desserts were served at meat meals prior to the invention of partially hydrogenated fats?  Right now I am thinking about my Grandma Rosie’s rhubarb and strawberries — oh my goodness, that was so good!  Fruits, compotes, and baked goods, made with olive or coconut oil.  If you can get a copy of the Settlement Cook Book [check college libraries], published in Milwaukee in 1901, you’ll find many pages of delicious-sounding desserts.  And one hundred years later, the ideas keep coming.  You don’t need trans-fat-containing margarine or shortening to make a fantastic pareve [or vegan] dessert. 

Need an example?  Here’s a recipe for “Orange Cake,” a creation from David Leite, a Portuguese American food writer, and the publisher and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Leite`s Culinaria : A Food Blog of Recipes, Food Writing, and Cooking.  When you make this recipe, David says to be sure to use a light-colored Bundt pan because, for some reason, dark pans turn out cakes that stick and are unpleasantly brown.  

David Leite’s Orange Cake (c) 2009
Ingredients:  4 to 5 large navel oranges, 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt,
5 large eggs, 3 cups granulated sugar, 1 1/2 cups mild extra-virgin olive oil, confectioners’ sugar (for sprinkling)

1) Heat oven to 350°F. Place rack in center of oven and remove any other racks. Thinly coat 12-cup Bundt pan with olive oil, dust with flour, and set aside.
2) Finely grate the zest from 3 oranges.  Set aside.
3) Squeeze juice from 4 oranges. If you do not have 1 1/2 cups of juice yet, squeeze 5th orange. Mix juice + zest, set aside.
4) Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl, and set aside.
5) In a large bowl, beat eggs on medium-high about 1 minute. Slowly add sugar and continue beating about 3 minutes, until thick and pale yellow. Decrease speed to low, and alternately add flour mixture and oil, starting and ending with flour.  Beat until just a few wisps of flour remain. Add orange juice + zest, and whirl for just a few seconds to mix.
6) Pour batter into Bundt pan and bake about 1 1/4 hrs until cake tester comes out with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it.  [Cover lightly with foil if top is browning too much.]  Cool on wire rack for 15 minutes.
7) Turn the cake out onto rack and cool completely. Then place in a covered cake stand and let it sit overnight. Just before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

David Leite says that this cake gets seriously better with age, so “don’t even think about taking a bite until the day after you make it, or even the day after that.”  So if you want it for this Friday night, buy your oranges now, and bake on Wednesday or Thursday. 
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Now that the cool weather is moving in, I thought it would be nice to talk about slow oven cooking.  This past week I did a lot of it.  As often happens when food cooks overnight in my oven, I was awakened periodically by its extraordinary fragrance.  You have to try it to believe it; no matter what you make, the smell is amazing. 

I started the week with lentils and tomato sauce by filling the soup pot with 1 cup dry brown lentils, a large can of pureed tomatoes, a can of water, 2 sliced onions, 2 sliced stalks of celery, 2 sliced carrots, 2 T. honey, 2 t. cumin, 2 t. curry, 1 t. turmeric, salt and pepper.  Then I added more water to cover the lentils and vegetables by a couple of inches.  It cooked all night in a covered pot at 225, and made a great lunch the next day.  OK, I admit it, it made a great breakfast, too.  I couldn’t resist; it just smelled so great in the morning.

One thing I have noticed about cooking lentils in a slow oven, by the way, is that they don’t break apart when you cook them.  Even the fragile little red/orange ones remain intact when you cook them in a slow oven.  That’s because this cooking method keeps them still, so they hardly get moved around at all.  In contrast, cooking on the stove continually moves the lentils from the bottom to the top of the saucepan, and the ongoing turbulent movement rapidly breaks them up.

Last week I also made turkey stock, and then followed that up with turkey soup made from the stock, leftover turkey bits, and vegetables.  Here’s how to make the stock:  Place an entire turkey carcass (all that is left after leftovers) into a soup pot and fill it halfway with water (maybe ½-2/3 gallon).  Place the covered pot into the oven and set the temperature to 225.  Chicken carcasses make good stock, too.

The next morning I turned off the oven, and let the stock cool.  Hours later, I set a colander above a second large pot, and lined the colander with an old, clean dishtowel.  You can also use a few layers of cheesecloth, or even a few paper towels.  Then I poured the liquid (and bones, etc.) into the lined colander, never allowing the liquid in the colander to rise above the edges of the cloth.  The resulting stock was clear, caramel-colored, and fragrant.  I divided it among a few glass jars (2-4 cups each), which I froze and dated for future use. 

Sometimes, if I am inclined and have time after the stock is clarified, I divide up the bones and bits into three piles: meat, bones, and other (like cartilage).  Otherwise, if I don’t have time, I just throw the whole mess away.  The meat goes into one container of stock, the bones go into the trash, and the other stuff goes in the dog bowl. 

To make the soup, I left the contents of one jar of stock in the soup pot.  Then I added turkey meat, two thinly sliced onions, 2 diced sweet potatoes, ½ c. dry white beans, a few garlic cloves (peeled), and 1 t. each of salt and pepper.  Then I put the pot into the 225-degree oven.  Then it woke me several times through the night.

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A post about slow oven cooking would not be complete without the recipe for Cindy & George’s black beans.  It probably will not surprise you to learn that Cindy, our talented Webmaster, and George, her husband, are great cooks.  Last week she stopped by with some of their fabulous black beans.  This is a good weekend project, started 24 hours before you intend to eat it.  They cook it on top of the stove, but here it is adapted for slow oven cooking: 

INGREDIENTS
2 lbs. dried black beans, 2 large onions, 2 large green peppers, 8 garlic cloves, 6 bay leaves, coarse salt, black pepper, olive oil, 1 t apple cider vinegar, cumin.

STEP 1 – EVENING
After dinner, clean and rinse beans carefully to remove any small pebbles. Add to a large soup pot along with 1 onion (quartered), 1 green pepper (seeded and quartered), 1 t. ground cumin, 1 t. coarse salt, 1 t. black pepper, 1.5 T olive oil, 4 large peeled garlic cloves (each slit lengthwise down the middle), and 3 bay leaves.  Note that some of the vegetables are being saved for later.  Add enough water to cover beans by 3-4 inches, cover and place the pot into a 225 oven (or crock pot) to cook all night.

STEP 2 – MORNING
In the morning, remove lid, check water line and add more to keep the level 1-2 inches above beans.  Skim any foam and discard.  Stir occasionally.  Cook uncovered for a couple of hrs.  Check water line.  Discard first set of bay leaves.  Transfer vegetables to a blender, puree, and return to pot.  The beans should be cracked and tender, but not mushy.  Add 3 more fresh bay leaves to the pot, plus black pepper to taste.  Cover the pot again and continue to cook. 

STEP 3 – AFTERNOON
Some time in the afternoon, warm 1/4 cup olive oil on low heat, add remaining 4 garlic cloves (diced) and stir.  Do not allow garlic to brown.  Add remaining onion (diced) and stir 8-10 min until glassy and tender.  Add green pepper (diced, seeds removed), and cook until soft.  Then add 1 t. apple cider vinegar, 1 t. cumin, and a little salt and pepper to the vegetables, stir, and add to the bean pot that is still cooking at low temp.  Continue to cook beans covered for another 1-2 hrs on low heat.  Serve with sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, hot sauce, cilantro, or whatever else you choose.  Makes 12-15 servings.  Freezes well.

It’s impossible to go wrong with slow oven cooking.  The flavors caramelize and blend to become complex and satisfying.  Although it is true that eating well takes more planning, it does not take more time.  In the case of slow oven cooking, it takes less.
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For L.G.
About a year ago, a friend of mine got interested in the raw food movement.  Raw foodists prefer their food, as advertised, raw.  Uncooked.  She said it changed her life.  OK, lots of people say stuff like that.  But I have to admit that I see the difference — she is more relaxed, and brimming with beauty and energy.  Four kids?  No problem!

So she had been wanting to introduce me to her new style of cooking, and we decided to get our families together for dinner.  No deal.  We couldn’t make it fit all our crazy schedules.  We resigned ourselves to the fact that we had to put the idea on hold until things settled down a bit.  My daughter was a little disappointed, having been introduced to the raw food movement as a college student in Toronto, but the boys were secretly relieved, skeptical as they were about the idea of eating “raw food.”  I decided to withhold judgment for the meanwhile. 

Then last night I had the good fortune to attend a picnic in the woods complete with tiny electric lights, an enormous bonfire, spectacular grilled salmon, great company, children of all ages, and a talented guitar player.  Something for everyone.  And a raw peach pie, courtesy of my friend, who was also in attendance.  It was fantastic.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterward.

This morning I called her for the recipe.  She measured one cup each of raw almonds and brazil nuts, and placed them in a water-filled jar to soak overnight.  The next day she drained the water, and placed the nuts in a food processor with 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and a scant 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.  She processed the contents until the consistency of meal, and then added 6-8 dates (Medjoul variety, the finest and sweetest) to make a dough.  She pressed the dough into a pan to form a crust, and then placed it in the freezer to firm up while she finished the recipe.

Next she cut 6-8 peaches into chunks, and mixed them with 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional), and 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg.  I was surprised to learn that the less sweet the peaches, the more important it was to include the lemon juice.  Then she slid the peach mixture into the crust, and refrigerated it until it was time for dessert.

Now, here’s what I want to know, and I’m going to need your help, dear readers.  First, you have to make this recipe, or take it to the family cook in your kitchen, and help them make it.  Then, you’re going to take out your glucometer or borrow one from a friend or relative.  Now you’re going to check and record your sugar, eat a slice of raw peach pie, and recheck your sugar 1 hour later. 

How much did your blood sugar rise?  Send a comment and let me know.  If I’m right, this pie will not spike your blood sugar like a traditional one made with a flour crust.  So, depending on how insulin-resistant you are, you may be able to eat a slice of this pie without hesitation, without worry, and without spiking your blood sugar.  And even if you are diabetic, you may be able to eat a slice, knowing that the blood sugar spike will be modest instead of astronomical.  

And did I mention how good that pie was?  I went back for a second piece before I’d finished the first.  OK, yes, I’m hooked. 

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Some time ago I wrote a post about store-bought, flavored yogurt and the absurd amounts of sugar contained therein,  called Everything You Wanted to Know About Yogurt but Were Afraid To Ask .   But the truth is there’s a lot more to know about yogurt, and don’t worry — it’s all good.

The first step to restoring yogurt to its healthful place in smart eating is to buy it plain.  You can try your hand at making your own yogurt, but you’ll still need some plain yogurt to get started.  “Plain,” by the way, is what I would have called yogurt if I wanted consumers to be more interested in other, fancier options, especially if I could increase profits by doing so.  But that’s not what I want for you, so  I would call it “pure” yogurt.  So the first step is to buy plain, whole-milk yogurt.  Now, if you aren’t ready to switch from low-fat to whole fat, we can compromise for now.  Just please make sure it’s plain yogurt, with live, active cultures (check the label).

This week, I compiled a list of various things that I saw people doing with yogurt, and then I added a few I’ve read about but never tried myself.  One thing that should be obvious is that we are selling ourselves short when we eat only the dessert-like products that are available commercially.  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1) Mix yogurt with curry powder and brush on grilled corn.
2) Sprinkle yogurt with fresh raspberries.
3) Add finely diced cucumbers, tomatoes, scallions AND onions to yogurt.
4) Slice 1/2 banana, add walnut pieces and sprinkle cinnamon on yogurt.
5) Mix 1-2 T yogurt with 1 part steel cut oats and 2 parts water.  Allow to sit overnight, and then heat and eat.
6) Marinate chicken in yogurt, paprika and garlic for several hours prior to baking.
7) Add 1-2 t. fresh dill, 2 T. olive oil, 1 T. lemon juice to 1 c. yogurt, and spread on a serving plate.  Lay roasted zucchini slices on top
    of the sauce.
8) Marinate lamb chops in yogurt, lemon, mint and cardamom for several hours prior to cooking.
9) Halve apples and/or pears, and grill.  When they’re done, drizzle with a dressing made of yogurt, honey and a pinch of cardamom.
10)Peel and slice a mango, and stir into yogurt.

If and when you’re up for making your own yogurt, it can be as simple as pouring 1 quart of whole milk (heated and cooled) into a casserole dish, adding 3 T pure, room temperature, whole-milk yogurt (this is your starter), stirring well, covering, and allowing the dish to sit overnight in a warm 100 F oven with the heat off.  Yogurt can also be made in a thermos bottle, on a heating pad, in the sun, on the back of a wood stove, or in a crockpot.  One trick worth sharing is to empty a carton of yogurt into an ice cube tray, freeze the cubes individually, and then collect them in a container in the freezer.  Each cube will serve as a starter for later use.

Finally, you can make cheese from yogurt.  My father taught me to make yogurt cheese, and it is fabulous — tangy, smooth, and satisfying.  All you need is a large container of pure yogurt and a dishcloth or some cheesecloth, 3-4 layers thick.  Dump the whole carton onto a large cloth, at least 15 x 15 inches square.  Draw up the 4 corners of the cloth and tie them together with string or a rubber band.  Then tie the knot to the handle of a large wooden/serving spoon, and hang the spoon (with its attached bundle) over a large saucepan so that the bundle hangs free.  Leave it for at least 8-12 hours, until the liquid stops dripping.  Remember — cooking with real food does require more advance planning, but not more time.  Oh yeh, you can discard the liquid or feed it to your dog.  Or drink it yourself.

When you open the cheesecloth you will find a beautiful, flavorful, fresh yogurt cheese imprinted with the shape of the cloth fibers.  Roll it in fresh thyme or basil, stir in garlic, or make it sweet with honey or jam.  Sprinkle a generous spoonful with a little bit of oregano and the best olive oil, and then add it to a plate of fresh tomatoes.  Spread it on a slice of sourdough bread.  Make small, 1/2-inch balls and add them to a salad.  The last time I made yogurt cheese, none was left by the end of the day.  Bon appetit!

Right now, the dill is taking over my herb garden in its lovely, flavorful and feathery bloom.  My attempts to use it don’t usually make a dent in the amount growing, even as I leave plenty to seed next year’s crop, or to share with the next interested gardener.  Mostly, I have been cutting it into salads.  I could also add it to butter, or make pickles, or hang some upside down to dry.  The dill is everywhere, self seeding from beautiful, zebra-colored seeds given to me a few years ago by a patient who also grows startlingly lovely lavender roses. 

The other day I was listening to the radio and heard someone say “dill pesto.”  I perked up and jotted down the ingredients: dill, cheddar cheese, scallions and walnuts.  Wow.  Now we’re talking!  Pesto is one of those things that I formerly associated only with basil, which I adore in the most celebratory sense of the word.  But my horizons were about to be widened.  I checked out “dill pesto” on line, and found a recipe that included parmigiana, pine nuts, and garlic, in other words, dill-substituted basil pesto.  That was not what I wanted.  If I were to make that recipe, I would forever compare it with the basil version.  The idea of a completely different set of ingredients appealed more. 

I pulled out the mini-food processor (an attachment to the immersion blender, thank you, Mom and Dad) and collected my ingredients.  I packed in ¾ cup dill, chunks of a piece of soft (room temperature) cheddar about 1 x 2 x 3 inches, ½ cup pumpkin seeds (nut-free house), and 2 very small onions (1-inch diameter) that came from East Side Veggies, my local CSA.  The result looked nice, but a bit dry, so I added 1 tablespoon of olive oil and set the processor awhirl again.  Then I scooped the pesto into a little dish, added a small spoon, and let it sit for a while to allow the flavors to blend.  An hour later, the contrast between the warm pink salmon and the kelly green pesto became a feast for our eyes, and the gentle, insistent flavor of the pesto turned our beautiful salmon, baked under a heaping pile of sliced raw onions, into a very special celebration.  The leftover pesto awaits scrambled eggs this morning.  Gotta go.

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And a quick reminder.  Remember to jot down a few words and send in a comment for the TEN-THOUSAND HITS contest!  The deadline is this Wednesday, June 16th.  If you would prefer to stay anonymous, just say so.  You can still win, and the prize of 2 “gourmet” soaps from www.sarvasoap.com is very special.  Check out their beautiful selection of spa, gallery, premium, holiday, rustic, and men’s soaps to see for yourself.

Almost exactly one year ago, when winter was coming to an end and spring was still soggy and cold, I discovered a lone organic* potato in my kitchen.  [*It is important to specify organic here because conventionally grown potatoes are much less likely to root and generate offspring.]  It was dried out and wrinkled, way past edible.  At least six baby roots were beginning to form on the skin.  I decided to try an experiment.  I cut up that potato into six pieces, each containing a rootlet.  I dug a trench in the garden on the far side of my backyard, and dropped in the pieces about 1 foot apart.  I covered them with dirt and waited.  A few weeks later, when potato buds began to push up through the mud, I covered them with more dirt and waited again.  I kept covering the buds until I got busy with more urgent projects, at which point I forgot about the potatoes.  Then, later that summer, I discovered a group of straggly potato plants in my backyard.  When I finally got around to digging up those potato plants to see what was hiding below, I found many beautiful, golden-skinned, new potatoes, perfect in every way. 

I know I shouldn’t have been surprised, but to be honest, I was.  It’s not that I never did anything like this before.  Yet it still created a sense of wonder.  All that stood between me and those new little potatoes was a bit of effort.  I already had the potato (such as it was) and, despite the fact that it was no longer edible, it still contained all the raw materials necessary to create new food, sustenance, satisfaction and joy.  The whole experience reminded me of the children’s folktale, “Something from Nothing,” about a little boy whose tailor grandfather continues to craft for him progressively smaller articles of clothing from the remains of other, cast-off pieces.

Our family has an exquisite Passover seder plate, a treasured gift of blue-and-white porcelain.  After seder, I don’t clear it from the table; it stays as a sort of centerpiece for days afterward.  It’s obviously not its appearance that keeps it there, but rather what it means to us.  And so it remains, in fading glory, long after the parsley, horseradish and charoset [a mixture of apples & walnuts] become dehydrated and unappealing.  A few years ago, when I finally removed the plate to the kitchen sink to be cleaned, I got the idea to plant the dry chunk of horseradish in the backyard garden.  I really had no idea what I was doing, but I remembered that friends where we once lived in Athens, Ohio, would always arrive days before Passover with a large jar of homemade horseradish, the most fiery I ever tasted, and prepared from horseradish that they themselves had grown.  Well, if they could do it… 

Sure enough, a few years later, by which time that undisturbed horseradish root had given rise to dozens of 2-foot long leaves, I dug up a huge clump of root, cleaned it well, tossed it into the food processor with vinegar and salt, and stood back.  Suffice to say the horseradish stimulated penetrating conversation that year, and every year since. 

Like my mother, I have maintained a compost pile wherever I have lived.  All the coffee grounds, egg shells, corn husks, apple cores, leftover green beans, nut shells, used tea bags, fruit pits and seeds, carrot peels, old refrigerator-drawer oranges, and other food waste go into it.  Leaves and grass would be okay, too, but I happen to put those in a different place.  Because the pile contains absolutely no meat, dairy or egg products (other than calcium-rich egg shells), there is never a problem with pests or rodents.  It is located out back, behind a particularly lucky spruce, in a spot initially demarcated by shiny chicken wire wrapped around four 4-ft-tall metal posts, each sticking a couple of feet out of the ground.  After 14 years, the rusty chicken wire is sagging and disappearing, and the spot is identified mainly by habit. 

A few words about that spruce:  When we arrived at our new home late in the summer of 1996, it did not look well.  It appeared to be fading, and I made a mental note to have it taken down the following spring.  Much to my delight and amazement, the new growth on each branch the following spring registered more than a foot.  It wasn’t dying; it was hungry!  The compost pile saved it.

In the spring, and at other times when I am planting, I push my shovel down deep into the pile to pull up a shovelful of rich, black dirt.  This is as fertile as soil can be.  I’ll toss some in a hole before I add a new bulb, or seed, or planting.  I’ll spread it around on the surface of my herb garden and dig it into the top few inches to enrich the soil and increase its organic content.  Then, as happens every year, nature takes over and the magic begins.  Some forgotten seed, lying dormant in the compost, germinates and begins to grow.  Two years ago, we got grape tomatoes, green beans and gourds.  This past year it was zucchini and roma tomatoes.  Once a gorgeous broccoli plant grew.  A few years ago, incredibly, a tiny date palm began to grow, oblivious to the fact that the weather in Cleveland, Ohio, would not be kind.  I recently learned that there is a name for this annual experiment.  My friend Amalia, newly the mother of twins, tells me that it is called “compost gardening.” 

Life may be found hiding in all kinds of unexpected places: a wizened old potato, a dry piece of horseradish, a spadeful of soil from deep within the compost pile.  You never know exactly what surprises are hiding within, but you can be guaranteee that, whatever they turn out to be, they will be flavorful and bountiful.  Some sun, some rain, and a little effort.  All free for the taking.