For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

This week romantic meals help you eat less, why you should buy organic meat, and how to fight holiday weight gain.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

Links of the week

• CANDLELIGHT, TABLECLOTHS CAN HELP CUT FOOD INTAKE <<Want to eat less? Turn off the TV, light some candles, put on some pretty music and actually enjoy your meal. Seriously guys, you can do this. (Dr. Weil)
• 3 insidious reasons we gain weight during the holidays (and how to fight them) <<You’re likely to gain a small amount of weight over this holiday season and never lose it. Here’s some helpful tips to prevent the years from stacking up on your belly. (Weighthacker)
• Top 9 Most Important Foods to Buy Organic <<This goes beyond the popular “Dirty Dozen” lists of fruit and vegetables, and includes meat, dairy, eggs, etc. (Mark’s Daily Apple)
• Looking for antibiotic-resistant bacteria? Try raw pork <<Following up on the last article, I would add organic pork to Mark’s list. (Grist)
• The Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog <<This is beyond hilarious. Not for those with delicate sensibilities, but if you love crude humor as much as I do you’ll be in stitches. (DeadSpin)
• How to Overhaul Your Diet <<Some really solid advice, if you’re new to the whole healthy eating thing. (Nutrition Diva)
• Telomere Lengths Predict Life Expectancy in the Wild, Research Shows <<For those interested in the science of aging, this is really fascinating. (ScienceDaily)
• A Quick and Easy Way to Estimate Portion Size <<I’m not sure how accurate this is, but it doesn’t look too far off base. It also seems super convenient. (Livestrong)
• Active Lifestyle Boosts Brain Structure and Slows Alzheimer’s Disease <<A more thorough study than most. Get that exercise, kids! (ScienceDaily)
• spinach salad with warm bacon vinaigrette <<I was just this week thinking about how tasty those warm spinach and bacon salads are, and this pops up. This is a great way to shift back to greens from the turkey and stuffing of last week. (smitten kitchen)

What inspired you this week?

Photo by pasukaru76

The Jedi are famous for many things: lightsabers, telekinesis, making out with their sisters, and of course, mind tricks. Using the power of The Force, Jedi can exert seemingly magical control over the minds of people around them, getting unwitting participants to cooperate in anything the Jedi wants.

Fortunately, this skill is not restricted to the order of Jedi Knights. Even normal humans with average levels of midi-chlorians in our blood can harness this power of persuasion. The secret is understanding that most of the feelings people have about things are highly subjective, and vary depending on context.

This is especially true of food.

The environment food is served in, its presentation, the attitudes of others and the words used to describe the dish have a bigger impact on how food is perceived than its actual taste. (Check out Brian Wansink’s book, Marketing Nutrition, if you want to geek out on this stuff.) Since we can control many of these factors, we can greatly influence how someone feels about the food we serve.

Food that is perceived as healthy is the most likely to be rejected by stubborn eaters. Whether you have a picky teenager at your table every night, or just want to bring a healthy dish to a holiday party, here are some tricks you can use to prevent the food from being rejected out of hand.

6 Jedi Mind Tricks That Convince People To Eat Healthy

1. Don’t tell them it’s healthy

People generally assume healthy ingredients make a food taste worse. Avoid this by not mentioning the healthfulness of the dish or any of its ingredients. Simply swipe your hand slowly in front of their faces and tell them this isn’t the healthy food they’re looking for. This food is delicious.

2. Don’t tell them it’s vegetarian (or vegan)

On a similar note never announce that a food is vegetarian or vegan, unless you happen to be feeding a crowd of vegetarians or vegans. Last 4th of July I attended a potluck, knowing there would be no shortage of ribs, chips and beer. I love all these foods, but wanted to make sure there was at least something healthy there for me to eat. To fill the gap I brought a farro salad filled with vegetables, greens and herbs. It was easy to make, inexpensive, and delicious. Was it vegetarian? Yep. Vegan? Uh-huh. Did anyone know that? Nope (except the one vegan girl who asked). Everyone loved it.

3. Name it after something fattening

If you ask almost any kid on the street if they want some cauliflower, the answer will likely be no. If you ask them if they’d like some cauliflower french fries, you’ll probably get a different response. Works like magic.

4. Tell a story

If you’re serving a dish you think people should like (because it tastes amazing), but you’re afraid they will reject (because of something that’s in it) try reframing the dish as something special by telling a story. Conversion stories are particularly effective. Maybe this is the recipe your two pre-teens can’t get enough of, or the dish that finally convinced your dad that beets aren’t gross. Giving people a reason to doubt their first impression by using an example of the opposite can be very persuasive.

5. Change the subject

If someone asks you point blank what’s in a dish, and you’re pretty sure they won’t like the answer, you can get around it by changing the subject. “Oh, this is just something that my husband really loves to eat. It’s got rice and some herbs. Are the Lakers playing tonight?”

6. Eat with gusto

Few things are as enticing as hearing someone moan with pleasure after taking a bite of food. Because, yeah, it’s that good. People will often reevaluate their opinions if they think they’re missing out on something. So eat with gusto, and maybe they’ll want to eat what you’re having.

What are your favorite Jedi mind tricks?

Rice Balls

I have been getting a lot of questions about rice lately, and I am not surprised. Though some people swear by rice cookers I have found them to be inconsistent and generally unreliable, especially when it comes to brown rice.

My solution? Stove top.

A few years ago I read about this method of cooking rice that supposedly worked “every time” for every kind of rice. I had trouble believing it because I’ve found that different styles of rice have hugely different requirements in both the amount of water and time needed. However, I have had great success with the method and am extremely happy with it (sorry, I do not remember where I found it).

The reason this trick works so consistently is that it does not rely on a specific amount of time or water. Rather you need to test the grains occasionally for tenderness and decide for yourself when it is done. I have found for brown rice the entire process takes about 30 minutes, which is 10 minutes shorter than it took in my rice cooker.

Because rice does take so long to prepare, I like to make large batches and freeze individual servings so that I do not have to wait half an hour for dinner every single night.

For short grain brown rice, I use about 2 cups of dry grain and a large 2 quart sauce pan. Put the rice in the pot and add cold water until it is almost full. Use your hand to swirl the rice around and loosen any dirt and dust. When the rice settles back to the bottom, dump the water off the top and repeat. Continue to rinse rice until the water is almost perfectly clear, about 4-5 times.

After the last rinse add cold water to your rice until you have at least 3 times the volume of water to rice. Do not worry too much about the amount, and err on the side of excess. This is especially important with brown rice which absorbs much more water than white rice. Place the rice and water on the stove and turn the heat on high.

When the rice begins to boil, reduce heat to medium and continue to simmer, uncovered. This is a good time to start the rest of your dinner.

Check on the rice grains occasionally by grabbing a few out with a fork and testing them for tenderness (squish between your fingernails or taste it). Rice becomes opaque when it cooks, so there is no point in checking it while it is still somewhat translucent. Once the rice does start to turn opaque, check tenderness every 2-5 minutes. If too much water evaporates and the rice starts to look soupy, you need to add more water. You should add enough water at the beginning to avoid this.

Boil rice until it is almost tender enough to eat. In other words, imagine you are an impatient person who wants the rice to be finished as quickly as possible so you decide the rice is done and serve it, but later regret that decision because the rice is ever so slightly al dente. It is at this point you want to stop the boiling and begin the steaming.

Next drain off the remaining water. A mesh strainer or splatter guard works nicely for this (hold it over the pot and simply dump the water into the sink), but you can also carefully pour the water off and use a fork to keep loose kernels from falling out (but seriously be careful!).

Place the pot with rice back on the burner and reduce the heat to as low as it will go. Cover the rice and set a kitchen timer for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes turn off the burner and set the timer for another 5 minutes. Do not lift the lid during this process unless you are concerned that you messed up the boiling time and want to check on the doneness. After the rice has sat for 5 minutes, remove the lid, fluff with a fork and serve. Put the lid back on if you are going to let the rice cool in the pot.

If for some reason you think you overcooked the rice when you were boiling it, you can skip the steaming step and just let the drained rice sit covered with the burner off for 5 minutes. If you undershoot, you can always extend the length of the steaming process, but it will take much longer.

I usually wait until the rice has cooled down substantially before wrapping it in plastic. It is the last thing I do in my after-dinner clean up. To store rice, break off squares of plastic wrap and scoop individual rice servings (1/4-1/2 cup) into the middle. Fold over the plastic, twist the ends and tie them in a half knot so that the rice is in a ball, as shown. Put rice balls in a freezer bag and into the freezer.

To thaw, remove a rice ball from the freezer and allow to sit on counter for a few minutes until you can untie the knot without leaving little pieces of plastic stuck in the folds of rice. If you forgot to do this (I always forget!) you can run the knotted plastic under warm (not hot, heat releases toxins in the plastic that can get into your food) until you can untie it. Place unwrapped frozen rice ball in a small bowl and microwave on high for 1-2 minutes. I like to use our microwave cover for this, but you have to figure out for yourself what works best in your own microwave.

Having individual rice servings is very, very handy. Brown rice is a fabulous option to make light vegetable dishes, soups and salads more substantial.

I just dug this recipe out of the archives because it is so darn useful. Use it wisely.

Originally published October 12, 2008.

The 4-Hour Chef

In my humble opinion, there are few things on this earth that improve your life (not to mention your physique) more than learning to cook.

Like most urban kids in the late 20th century, I grew up thinking that “cooking” meant heating frozen lasagna or adding orange powder and butter to tubular noodles. Heating food is hardly the same as cooking, but even if you love Kraft’s neon version of Mac N’ Cheese, if this is where your culinary adventures end you’re selling yourself sadly short.

That said, by no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a chef. The most common request I get from readers is for more recipes. But while I am touched by the overwhelming positive responses to my roasted cauliflower and delicata squash dishes (both ultra-simple kitchen homeruns), it has been difficult for me to provide more detailed cooking instructions on a regular basis.

The reason for this is that I almost never use recipes myself. I find them constraining, which means they generate a certain amount of stress for me—not dissimilar from the feelings I had running experiments in the lab (you can keep your frozen aliquots of DNAse, thanks). It’s slightly comforting knowing I could cook by the book if I had to. But the reality is I have more fun being creative with the ingredients I have at the moment, sort of winging it as I go.

The result of this method is that while I often eat delicious food, I rarely cook exactly the same thing twice, which does not make for reliable recipe development. If I do share a recipe here on the blog, it is usually because I’ve found a simple technique to make an ingredient taste lightyears better than it had ever turned out on accident with my random kitchen hacking methods. These are discoveries I think will change your life, and I am very confident you can reproduce.

Of course when I first started cooking I was not proficient enough to be so whimsical. It took years of kitchen experiments and more than a few screw-ups to get to a place where most of the things I cook at home are edible. This skill level (nothing particularly impressive, but head and shoulders above most open-heat-serve American dinners) is the minimum you should strive for if you’re serious about optimizing your healthstyle.

Enter: The 4-Hour Chef. Despite the cooking theme, this is not a cookbook. Think of it more as a cooking class, where each recipe is designed to teach a skill (e.g. braising, sautéing, knife skills, etc.) and every subsequent recipe builds upon those of the last. The idea is to teach the principles of cooking, so that after finishing the book you can tackle any recipe you come across and, more important, have the skills to improvise on your own.

If you’ve struggled with cooking in the past, this alone is enough of a reason to pick up the book. Not only will it ensure that you have the essentials under your belt, it’ll also give you a few crowd-pleasers to dazzle dates and parents alike. But the fun doesn’t stop there.

The 4-Hour Chef is divided into five main parts: Meta-Learning, The Domestic, The Wild, The Scientist, and The Professional. For those familiar with Tim Ferriss‘ previous work, these subdivisions make perfect sense. If not, here’s a quick rundown:

Tim* is a bit of a self-made savant, and has built his career on starting as a no-name, know-nothing then transforming himself into a world-class _(fill in the blank)    . The “blank” for Tim has included holding a world record in tango, being a champion Chinese kickboxer, #1 best-selling author, etc. The full list of Tim’s accomplishments is astounding. As such he’s developed a reputation for learning things incredibly quickly, unusually and effectively. In The 4-Hour Chef he unveils the secrets of this “meta-learning” using cooking (a skill he’d always struggled with) as an example.

At first glance I was most excited about the Meta-Learning, Domestic and Scientist sections (go figure), and I was not disappointed. In “Meta” he breaks down the basics of deconstructing problems (e.g. language learning, tango, swimming, tasting, launching companies, etc.) and solving them in the most effective way possible. (It also includes how to say “I must eat” in 9 different languages. Win.). Long-time Ferriss fans will love this section.

Despite having a decent idea of how to navigate a kitchen, I learned a lot from the “Dom” section as well, and found its instructions far more logical than most introduction cookbooks. He focuses on transferable skills, like learning to “eyeball” measurements (while clarifying when you need to be exact) and knowing when something is “done.” There are also dozens of little tips and tricks that’ll instantly skyrocket your kitchen confidence, which is half the battle of sticking with it. Though I didn’t cook my way through the lesson plan (I’ve only had the book for a few days), it seemed highly approachable and even a little fun. The first day you’ll learn to make osso “buko” without ever touching a knife.

The “Sci” section wasn’t at all what I expected (come to think of it, I have no idea what I expected—I just like science). It turned out to be a crash course in molecular gastronomy, which left me a bit crestfallen at first. While I love eating at fancy restaurants that serve elegant foams and spherical droplets of surprising flavors, I’ve never had any desire to recreate these things at home; some things are best left to the professionals. But the second I saw his “Crunchy Bloody Mary” recipe where chipotle infused vodka and bloody mary mix is transformed into a gel used to fill mini celery sticks, I had a change of heart. Reading the science behind all the culinary magic of restaurants like Alinea and El Bulli is fascinating, and I picked up a few parlor tricks to impress my friends. This section is a great way to feed your inner food geek.

I didn’t expect to be as impressed with the “Wild” section. Catching city pigeons in the park with my bare hands? Thanks, but no thanks. Yet sure enough, I was roped in after a few pages. The recent devastation of Hurricane Sandy really drove home the importance of this section. Though he dives deeper into shelter building and arrow carving than I probably need (Tim may beg to differ), this section is an excellent lesson on the value of life, the importance of life skills, and even a few things you’ll use on a more regular basis, like quartering a chicken. To my surprise, I found myself enthralled by the details of cooking a squirrel over a fire and removing pigeon (aka squab) breasts from a whole bird (feathers and all) with bare hands. Yum.

The “Pro” section was another surprise. As I’ve said, I’ve never aspired to cook like a pro at home. I just want simple, tasty food. And the quicker the better. But this section is essential for transferring the skills from the rest of the book into things you can use in the real world. It also covers some essential “classic” dishes, like roasted chicken, that weren’t covered in the “Dom” section. Most important, this section teaches you the basics of kitchen creativity, and how to branch out and improvise on your own using the techniques from the earlier sections.

The 4-Hour Chef is an incredibly ambitious book, but it is clear from the beginning that the goal is always to simplify and distill the essence of any task to its basic elements. It teaches the principles of cooking (and learning in general), not one-off recipes that you may or may not get around to making. I anticipate using it for years as a reference, whether it’s to find restaurant recommendations in NYC or as a reminder of the essential few ingredients that define a specific ethnic cuisine. I’ve flagged dozens of pages to revisit in the future.

On that note, I’d highly recommend getting the hardcover if you plan to buy it. I have both the print copy and the Kindle version, and while the latter will certainly suffice (and is much lighter, if that’s an issue for you) you really miss out on the beautiful design and experience of the printed book. That said, both the print ($21.00) and the Kindle versions ($4.99) are on sale right now, so you can get both for less than the price of one originally priced hard copy ($35).

Lastly, I also love that Tim revisits life philosophies in this book, which I loved in The 4-Hour Work Week, but missed in The 4-Hour Body. The 4-Hour Chef touches on several invaluable life lessons, including why it is important to not waste food (especially if it comes from an animal), and how cooking is a path that brings you closer to love and life. Feeding ourselves is one of our most basic human needs, and is at the root of our life, our culture and ultimately our happiness.

Bon appetit! 

*Full disclosure: As many of you know, Tim is a friend. He even included a jumbotron shot of me stuffing my face in the first few pages of the book. Hence my using his first name in this review and not his surname, which is more conventional in journalism. That said, he did not ask me to write this review, nor am I being compensated in any way for writing it (unless you count the $0.20 Amazon affiliate commission I’d get from reviewing any book in their inventory—blogging isn’t particularly profitable). The truth is I would have reviewed The 4-Hour Chef whether I knew Tim or not (I was a fan before we were friends, The 4-Hour Work Week changed my life), because I knew it had the potential to be particularly valuable to you (my readers). You may think you want more recipes, but what you really want is to feed yourself well in as many ways as possible. This book is the equivalent of teaching you to fish, rather than giving you fish. If you still have conflict of interest concerns, feel free to voice them in the comments. Just keep in mind that nothing trumps trust on the internet and I’ve spent years working to gain yours. As much as I like Tim, I’d be an idiot to jeopardize that.

UPDATE: Joyus has extended the offer until Thanksgiving Day, November 22! Happy Holidays!

I’m thrilled to announce an amazing farmers market gift set I put together with Emily Olson and the folks over at Joyus.

The set includes Mercado (the farmers market bag I helped design), a set of reusable produce bags, a jar of tomatoes from the amazing Happy Girl Kitchen, Good Food Award winning pickled cauliflower with turmeric, and a grow your own mushroom kit. It’s perfect for the farmers market shopper in your life, and a great way to get some of your holiday shopping done of early.

The gift set is a steal for $69.95. But this week only Summer Tomato readers can take 20% off their entire Joyus purchase.

Just use the link: bit.ly/stomato and enter the code: SUMMERTOMATO

Sale ends November 17 November 22!

Pssst… the code will get you 20% off even if you want to get a Mercado or two for yourself. Enjoy!