Home » food (Page 12)

Category Archives: food

Soup or Salad

Posted on by | 2 Comments
So You Think It’s Healthy, Huh?

So You Think It’s Healthy, Huh?

It was Canadian writer Douglas Coupland who wrote that “Salad bars are like a restaurant’s lungs. They soak up the impurities and bacteria in the environment, leaving you with much cleaner air to enjoy.”

We have taken it so much for granted that salads are the perfect food that we typically ignore a few basic facts. First of all, how many of you salad-eaters actually clean the veggies you use, especially the lettuces? And then, how many of you pour sugary, fatty glop over the salad in an effort to make it palatable?

When I was growing up in Cleveland, we never ate salads, except occasionally for a warm salad made with romaine lettuce and bacon—and even then I never cared for the stuff. We had our own vegetable garden out back, so we never lacked for vegetables, which we sometimes ate raw, as tomatoes; or canned, such as Hungarian yellow banana peppers; or cooked, as cabbage.

I think that Hungarians would much rather eat their veggies in a soup than in a salad. So yesterday, I prepared a Hungarian-style pea soup with carrots and potatoes. For that extra Vitamin B touch and some delicious background flavor, I blend Swiss chard and curly parsley with some of the stock and pour it into the tureen.

So go ahead and disconsolately pick at that dubious salad. I prefer good soup just about any time. In fact, only when the temperature soars into the 90s that I will occasionally eat a chopped salad at lunchtime with a light vinaigrette dressing. Otherwise, no way!

 

Don’t Toque to Me About Chefs!

Posted on by | 3 Comments
Making a $25.00 Tower of Exotic Foodstuffs

Making a $45.00 Tower of Exotic Foodstuffs

The problem with American restaurants is that there are too many chefs and not enough cooks. Ever since the Food Network went on the air, people started paying too much attention to people with large white toques who like to mess around with food, forming little towers of quinoa with raspberry sauce and maybe a small amount of meat or fish. The less the foods appear to go together, the more renown the chef is likely to earn for his or her daring.

It’s become an epidemic. The tutsi-fruitsie is king. The ice tea is contaminated with passion fruit or other petrochemical waste. Side dishes avoid the usual rice or potatoes and provide instead broccolini with mashed yeast and ground Murano glass and Galena lead pellets.

Whenever I see some Culinary Institute of America (CIA) chef wearing a towering white toque, I know I’m in for a pretentious soaking. On the other hand, when I see what Hungarians call a szakács or szakácsnő (cook, masculine or feminine gender respectively), I know I am likely to have an excellent meal. There must be no toque or other sartorial trimmings. I want a good, honest cook who knows how to prepare food. And no little towers!

As for the Food Network, I hope they switch over to running “Antiques Roadshow” or “Pawn Stars.” Or maybe they can talk about Kim Kardashian or some other celebrity twinkie. They certainly have not done anything to improve the quality of food in this country.

In Search of the Next Superfood

Posted on by | 1 Comment
Is It Chinese Goji Berries?

So Is It Now Chinese Goji Berries?

This is a kind of continuation of yesterday’s post about Clickbait. I get this picture that everything the news or the Internet says about health and nutrition is about 90% wrong. Every week, there’s a new cure for cancer; or a new superfood is discovered that is the holy grail to health, longevity, and a clear brain. It seems that, earlier this year, the superfood of choice was kale, at which I poked fun in a post last May. Before long, there were kale chips, kale jerky, kale pizza, and even 5,000 mg kale capsules suitable for horses.

As for myself, I don’t much care about this sterile quest. I’ve always believed that it is best to eat a varied diet rich in fruits and vegetables. There is no single food that I rely on to supply the majority of my nutritional needs. I have this friend whom I shall call Nelson, who discovers a new superfood every six months and tells me all about the benefits of eating lots of it. It has changed his life … until the next superfood comes along and takes its place.

There is a PBS channel in Orange County that Martine watches from time to time. A parade of health and nutrition gurus is paraded before the viewers with packaged books, DVDs, pills, and exercise programs. They will prevent cancer, keep your mind clear through your declining years, and make you look like twenty even when you’re on Medicare. I see the audiences who are lapping up every word these gurus say. These people want to be saved. They will send in their checks and get the package and perhaps follow the program for a week or two. In a couple months, you’ll see hem in another studio audience listening to a different guru with yet another program.

I am reminded of the Chinese search for the Pill of Immortality. It was a very powerful pill because, although it didn’t exist, it almost brought down one of the world’s great religions—Taoism. I’m waiting to see this pill on offer through a clickbait ad on the Internet.

 

A Joke Becomes a Reality

Posted on by | 2 Comments
Now You Can Use a 3-D Printer to Make a Pizza

Now You Can Use a 3-D Printer to Make a Pizza

(No, this is not about the recently concluded midterm election: There’s nothing I could say about THAT subject that is fit for civilized company. So I will just shut up, grit my teeth, and soldier on.)

Years ago, I worked for a company called Urban Decision Systems which sold demographic data for site analysis. My office as Director of Corporate Communications was adjacent to the sales area, where there were three cubicles for order-takers. Nrxt to them was a counter with a FAX machine. One of the order-takers was a salesperson whom I shall call Vida. Once, when the FAX was not functioning properly, Vida asked me what was wrong. I answered her by saying that the sales manager had a pizza FAXed to him the previous evening, and that some of the pepperonis got caught in the machine during transmission. To my shock, she seemed to believe my story.

Today, thanks to a machine called the Foodini, a pizza can be “printed” using 3-D printer technology. I’m not quite sure how the pizza gets cooked in the printing process, but I’m sure that the engineers at Foodini will find a solution to that problem. (Of course, cold pizzas can be delicious, and are one of my favorite breakfast foods.)

 

Is This Necessarily a Good Thing?

Posted on by | 3 Comments
“If It Doesn’t Get All Over the Place, It Doesn’t Belong in Your Face”

“If It Doesn’t Get All Over the Place, It Doesn’t Belong in Your Face”

The motto that serves as the caption to the above photograph comes from the Carls Jr. Restaurant Chain in the 1990s. Ads showed children trying to eat giant burgers that dripped all over the table and their clothes.

I myself am not partial to the idea of unmanageable food. I would rather convey my meal directly from the plate via a fork or spoon into my mouth, and thence to my esophagus. Much to Martine’s dismay, however, there are three things that lead to indelible food stains on my shirtfronts:

  1. When I eat alone, I am always reading a magazine or newspaper;
  2. There is a protuberance that juts out over my belt line that serves to catch whatever falls off my utensils; and
  3. I like Asian and Latino foods that are served with sauces that attack me when I am not super-careful.

I am not going to stop reading when I eat alone: That would be unthinkable. Of course, I could lose eighty pounds, but that’s even more unthinkable. Perhaps my forks or spoons should come equipped with a high-gravity force field that would keep food on it until it is suctioned off by my mouth.

Many times, when I call Martine from work, she complains about stains that she is using various chemical means to eradicate, but with mixed success. I talk about replacing the shirts with new ones, but that just tends to upset her.

A former girlfriend bought a gold lamé bib for me which I think looks slightly effeminate. Perhaps I should wear a poncho or raincoat whenever I eat. At least, it wouldn’t raise any more eyebrows than that damned gold lamé bib.

 

It’s the Miracle Food!!!

Posted on by | 2 Comments
You Must Eat Three Pounds of Kale a Day to Thrive

You Must Eat Seven Pounds of Kale a Day in Order to Survive!

Okay, so I lied, both in the title of this posting and the caption to the photo above. I’m sure kale is as good for you as any number of other greens which have tended to be ignored. And, to my mind, kale is by no means the tastiest of the bunch. If I had my druthers, I would select Swiss chard which I use in most of my soup recipes. It’s not as bitter as kale, and probably just as good.

In fact, I used NutritionData.Com to do a comparative analysis of 1 cup of cooked, boiled, drained, without salt kale and Swiss chard. Click on either of these and you will learn more than you ever needed or wanted to know. The important thing to remember is this: Kale is not a miracle food, but like all greens is good for you.

Kale is now riding the high horse of newspaper-sanctioned prosperity, until such time as the media discovers that it causes cancer, beri-beri, pellagra, dengue, and leprosy. In the meantime, I suppose you could continue to eat your seven pounds of kale daily, not neglecting all the other vitamins and minerals your body needs to function.

I am sure that, any day now, I will see kale capsules available on the nutritional supplements shelf of your local pharmacy. Each 1,000 MG capsule will run you $3.95; and you should take three a day, one with each meal. Or you’ll be able to get kale oil. Feel free to rub it all over your skin and see how it changes your coloration to dark green. And how healthy is that?

 

 

Beigli

Posted on by
Hungarian Ground Walnut and Poppy Seed Rolls (Beigli)

Hungarian Ground Walnut and Poppy Seed Rolls (Beigli)

Today was a combined Spring Festival and Mother’s Day Celebration at the San Fernando Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in Reseda.Martine and I always show up the first Sunday in May to help relieve the parishioners of their excellent home cooked food. Available was gulyás leves (better known as Hungarian Goulash, actually a beef and vegetable soup), Hungarian kolbasz sausage with red cabbage, barbecued pork (laci pecsenye), and langos (a fried bread concoction that Hungarians go gaga over). But the starring attraction were the many varieties of pastries, especially a type of custardy cheesecake not quite as sweet as the deli variety, and, of course, beigli.

When I was a kid in Cleveland, it was the beigli with ground walnut that I most particularly remembered. My Mom made it at least once a week, together with the ground poppy seed variety which I did not like nearly as much Although Martine made major inroads on the pastry table, including several varieties to take home, for the first time I passed up sampling any. I know what it tastes like. I love it. But I have Type 2 Diabetes and am fighting a difficult battle.

Still, we had a good time, watching a recitation, singing, and dancing presentation on the subject of Mother’s Day. Then, the local dancing master, Tibor, showed couples how to dance the csardás, the most famous of the Magyar folk dances.

Finally, there was a literary event in which the author of a book on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution had two reciters read passages about how he fled Budapest to Yugoslavia and finally settled in the United States. I didn’t understand very much, as my Hungarian is quite rudimentary, and both the book and the recitation were mostly above my head. Still, it’s good for me to reacquaint myself with my native tongue, however much I stumble my way through it.

Bad Luck With Restaurants

Posted on by | 2 Comments
Sambar and Idlis

Sambar and Idlis

Los Angeles has its very own India community in Artesia, just off the Pioneer Blvd. exit on he 91 Freeway. Martine and I decided to eat lunch there and shop at the nearby Stater Brothers Supermarket. So we went to Woodlands Restaurant, which specializes in South Indian (or, to be even more specific, Keralan) cuisine. I knew I was taking a chance with Martine, because she prefers standard North Indian cuisine. While I was having a great meal with sambar (a kind of spicy vegetarian soup) and idlis (little rice “flying saucers”) and a tasty glass of salt lassi, Martine was trying all the dishes that worked for her at her favorite North Indian restaurants. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for her here: the chicken was cold, the rice pudding was hot and watery, and so on and so forth.

Add to that the fact that, not being a cook and having any real food sense, Martine usually has difficulties in the dishes she selects at restaurants. At any given restaurant—and only if she were well familiar with it—she will typically select only one, or at the most two, dishes. Since I have more food smarts, I can usually please myself at places she winds up hating. It’s a pity, because I would like to go back to Woodlands one of these days to try their uppamav, a delightful South Indian dish made with Cream of Wheat!

 

So You Think It’s Good for You?

Posted on by | 2 Comments
Soybeans

Soybeans

Unfortunately, we Americans tend to pay far too much attention to the news media, not only when it comes to straight news, but also feature stories about food and health. We’ve all seen the stories: Avoid ill health by drinking sugarless sodas, followed by how artificial sweeteners are worse for you than sugar. For decades, articles are trumpeted the benefits of protein from soybeans. Now there are an equal number of articles blaming soy for feminizing men by giving them man-boobs.

The number of news villains in our diet have included eggs, fats, tomatoes (long ago thought to be poisonous), cheeses, and smoked meats. I am reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s film Sleeper (1973) in which two doctors are discussing Miles Monroe (played by Woody):

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called “wheat germ, organic honey and tiger’s milk.”

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or… hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy… precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible.

Maybe deep fat, steak, cream pies, and hot fudge are bad for you, but I have my suspicions about wheat germ, organic honey, and tiger’s milk—which may be no better.

I have come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to not get into a food rut. A bad food rut can include salads just as much as it could include cheeseburgers and fries. Eat meat. Eat eggs. Eat fruit. Eat vegetables. But know this: There are no magic foods that will cure what ails you. That is pure snake oil.

 

The Squid Test

Posted on by | 5 Comments
Not the Loveliest of Sea Cretaures

Not the Loveliest of Sea Creatures

If lots of different categories of foods fail to pass your “Yuck!” test, it’s fairly certain that squid is on your “avoid at all costs” list. It’s a pity, because most people have never had any really fresh squid. They’re used to those rubbery breaded rings served with a generic tomato dipping sauce at some restaurants with pretensions to high class.

Today, I went to a new Italian restaurant in Westwood called the Donna Sophia Trattoria Napoletana and decided to give them the squid test. Their daily special was tagliatelle cooked in squid ink with calamari. I had never tried anything cooked in squid ink before, but I was feeling decidedly peckish, so I went for it. It was delicious. The calamari pieces were actually tender, and the tagliatelle was made from scratch. Sometimes it pays to take a chance.

Usually, the only places where I’ve had really tender calamari was in certain of the more ethnic Thai restaurants. It was great to see an Italian restaurant where they knew something about squid above and beyond keeping it in the freezer for several decades.

If Donna Sophia had failed to pass my squid test, I would reluctantly have concluded that the place was not very good. Fortunately, it passed with flying colors. It’s so unusual to see a new restaurant in Westwood that is not exclusively Burgers-and-Fries or rice-bowls.