Road notes

Biscuits at the Loveless Cafe, Nashville.

We've been on the road for a little more than a week now, and so far, we've managed to keep the cost of eating to a minimum without resorting to fast food. How? By selecting restaurants where we know we'll get something that we wouldn't get either in Charlottesville, where we live, or Northern California, where we're heading. And for all other meals, there's the food box and the cooler.

In the food box is tube filled with peanut butter, bags of Uncle Ben's precooked rice and Madras lentils from TastyBite, a variety of crackers, a dozen corn tortillas, a half-pound of cheddar (wrapped in a paper towel and stored in a plastic container, to ward off mold), freshly ground coffee, a few lemons and limes, pop-top cans of tuna and salmon, a slice of vacuum-packed country ham, cups of applesauce, mandarin oranges and fruit cocktail, small bottles of olive oil and Italian spice mix, a couple of instant Thai meals and a backpacking freeze-dried meal left over from a backpacking trip. In the cooler went a tube filled with a mixture of light cream cheese and feta, milk, a bag of fresh salad greens and a butter lettuce, an orange bell pepper, a package of grilled chicken strips and a few packs of frozen slow-cooked pork.

Out of this has come some fancy salads, soft tacos, plates of rice and lentils, and some very portable lunches that can be eaten on a cracker at a time while driving. A shout-out to REI for our camp stove that's smaller than our portable cookware, and the fillable food tubes. Only in Memphis did we not have an outdoor place to use the stove, but the room had a microwave, so that worked pretty well.

By far, our favorite meals out have been at the Loveless Cafe in Nashville, and Rendezvous ribs in Memphis.

Calamari rings in a winner

Most people have their first encounter with squid as fried rings of calamari. Not me. My friend Alan took to an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia that had recently been the site of a mob hit. He pointed out the blood stains between the floor tiles. He ordered us a couple of dishes and my spaghetti had a rich tomato sauce with a bunch of white rings. I took a bite; "What is this incredibly delicious round pasta?" I asked. He smiled and said, "Squid." I've been in love with it ever since.

I'd still rather have it in a sauce than fried. Below is a recipe I've made several times in the past few months, most recently for company last night. If you can't find fresh baby squid, the kind that is frozen whole is a good substitute. It's not hard to cut up, but you should lop off the beaks and any stray cartilage you find as you do. If you want to know why I'm not buying rings-only calamari anymore, take a look at this transcript from NPR's "This American Life."


Linguine with Calamari and Garlic 
adapted from a recipe in Bon Appétit, December 1996
Serves 2

Ingredients
1/2 pound linguine
4 anchovies, from 2-ounce tin; anchovies crushed, oil reserved
3 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 pound cleaned calamari (squid), thinly sliced crosswise
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 tablespoon capers
3/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves or 1 tablespoon dried

Instructions
Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup cooking liquid.
Meanwhile, heat reserved oil from anchovies in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and cook about a minute. Add calamari and toss just until opaque, about 1 minute. Add crushed red pepper, anchovies and capers and stir 1 minute. Add white wine; boil until sauce is slightly reduced, about 3 minutes. Mix in basil.
Add pasta to mixture in skillet. Toss until heated through and sauce coats pasta, adding reserved cooking liquid by tablespoonfuls if pasta seems dry, about 2 minutes. Divide pasta and calamari between 2 plates and serve.

Need to use up the extra anchovies? Here's an excellent side dish for this meal.


Seared Broccoli with Anchovy Vinaigrette
Recipe adapted from Maria Hines, Agrodolce, Seattle, WA
Serves 4

Ingredients
Anchovy Vinaigrette:
4 oil-packed anchovies
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, peeled
⅓ cup canola oil
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Broccoli:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 large bunch of broccoli, trimmed into small florets
¾ teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped
⅛ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1/2 fresh lemon, juiced
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
 
Instructions
Make the anchovy vinaigrette: In a blender, purée the anchovies, vinegar and garlic together on high speed until smooth. Reduce the blender speed to medium and slowly pour in the canola oil, blending until the vinaigrette is emulsified and thick. Season with the pepper.
Make the broccoli: Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the canola oil and broccoli florets and season with ½ teaspoon of the salt. Cook, stirring once or twice, until the florets are caramelized, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring constantly, until the garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the lemon juice and season with the remaining ¼ teaspoon of salt and the pepper. Transfer the broccoli to a serving platter and drizzle with the anchovy vinaigrette. Serve warm.

Wahoo for evoo - olive oil aids memory

The Smithsonian has some good news for us olive oil lovers: Not only does it taste good, it can be good  for our brains as well. http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/03/the-secret-to-olive-oils-anti-alzheimers-powers/

When eggs go south - south of the border, that is

Photograph: treehugger.com

Spending my formative years among artsy people in Texas taught me appreciation for many things that were not part of my childhood, or were a part of it in a twisted way that I couldn't appreciate. For instance, my dad loved Mexican food, but what we got was tamales in a can, Hormel Chili, and El Patio frozen Mexican meals. It's a wonder I ever stepped inside a Mexican restaurant after that experience.

But step I did, at all times of the day and night. As much as I loved Tex-Mex, more authentic Mexican food from different regions was making inroads into Houston in the 1970s, and with those came places that served Mexican breakfasts. I ate it all.

I still love a good Mexican breakfast, so I keep cans of Herdez sauces in the pantry, because I am not awake enough to do any sauce from scratch before 10 a.m. When I saw a Food & Wine recipe in my email for Mexican Eggs in Purgatory, I knew I had to try it. But I also knew that I wouldn't be running to the grocery store to get a pound of tomatillos before breakfast. So again, Herdez to the rescue.

If you have access to fresh tomatillos and want to try the original recipe by Grace Parsi of Food & Wine, here's the link: Mexican Eggs in Purgatory

Lori K's Fast Mexican Eggs in Purgatory
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons crumbled bacon
1 can Herdez salsa verde
2-3 eggs
2 ounces Cotija or feta cheese, crumbled
2 green onion tops, sliced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Warm corn tortillas for serving

Ingredients
Preheat the broiler and position a rack about 8 inches from the heat source.
In a cast iron pan or shallow flame-proof casserole, heat the oil on a stove burner set on low. Add the garlic and the bacon bits, and cook for 5 minutes. Take a paper towel, fold it in half and place it on top of the pan, holding one end. With a wooden spoon, gently press to remove extra grease. Discard.
Add the can of salsa verde to the pan, raise the heat to medium, and cook until it bubbles vigorously, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs gently, far enough apart so they don't touch one another. Add the crumbled cheese over the top of all, avoiding the yolks.
Put the pan in the oven. Set the timer for 3 minutes.
Put 6 corn tortillas in a towel or warmer, and put in the microwave. When there's a minute left on the timer, turn on the microwave for 1 minute.
When the timer goes off, check the eggs. The whites should be set but the yolks runny. If the whites aren't set, keep them under the broiler for another minute.
After you pull them out of the oven, sprinkle with the green onion slices and cilantro, if using. Serve immediately with the warm tortillas.
Good with sliced avocados and refried black beans; for a hardier meal, serve with hash browns or country fried potatoes.

A great meal, on the lamb

The video above is of cute lambs, if you don't mind seeing where your food comes from.

We had a huge dump of snow last week, knocking out our power for several days. So I did a lot of cooking (to be frank, most of the time was spent planning for what to eat next, to make the most of the food that might not make it through the outage), and not too much writing.

But we did have one truly spectacular meal that I had to write about: a lamb tangine. I had already decided I'd use ground lamb instead of the traditional cubed lamb in it to cut down on cooking time, but  I further adapted it into a totally one-dish meal so that I wouldn't have to dirty any more dishes than necessary, since in our house, no electricity means no running water, either. So I upped the water a bit and added dry couscous to the pot before serving, letting it simmer for about 5 minutes to make sure the couscous was fully cooked and fluffy.

And with only the candlelight for illumination, it was quite romantic as well.


Ground Lamb Tagine
Adapted from a recipe by Ethan Stowell, Food & Wine magazine
Serves 8

Ingredients
1/4 cup olive oil
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 lemon, zest removed, and juice reserved
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
Pinch of saffron threads, crumbled
One 3-inch cinnamon stick
Kosher salt
2 pounds ground lamb
4 cups water
6 large carrots, thinly sliced
1 onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 cups pitted green Picholine olives, rinsed
1 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 cup cilantro leaves, chopped
3 cups of cooked couscous

In a large bowl, mix the olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, ginger, paprika, coriander, cumin, black pepper, cayenne, cloves, saffron, cinnamon stick and 1 tablespoon of kosher salt. Add the lamb mix well. Refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, scrape the lamb and spices by tablespoon into a tagine or a medium enameled cast-iron casserole. Add the water, carrots and onion and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook over low heat for about an hour.
Refrigerate. When you get home from work, spoon off any fat that is on the top, then cook until everything is tender and the liquid has reduced. Stir in the olives, season with salt (if needed) and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the parsley, cilantro and 3 tablespoons lemon juice. Ladle into bowls over couscous and serve.

Parsing parsley into a light lunch

Shopping online with Relay Foods is a mostly good experience, but every now and then, I get something that I didn't expect. This week, for instance, I ordered tabbouleh, which is usually predominately bulgar (cracked) wheat. But Asmar's Tabbouleh is mostly parsley. I like parsley, but as an ingredient, not the main portion of the salad.

So what to do with 8 ounces of mostly parsley? I could see using some of it in a salad dressing or marinade. But when my lunch date canceled out on me and I was out of cold cuts, I decided on a bit of pasta for lunch. And you know what? The parsley came in very handy.

Quick Orzo Lunch
Serves 1

Ingredients
Salt
1/3 cup uncooked orzo or other small pasta
8 cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons Asmar's Tabbouleh (or chop together 2 tablespoons parsley and 1 green onion with a little lemon juice and olive oil and a couple of mint leaves)
1 ounce goat cheese

Instructions
Fill a deep saucepan half full of water. Add salt. Bring to a boil. Add orzo and cook until it turns white. Drain, reserving a tablespoon of water.
While the orzo is cooking, smash the cherry tomatoes gently in a microwave-safe bowl. Cook for 1-2 minutes until very hot. Put the parsley mixture and goat cheese in a mixing bowl.
Immediately after draining, put the cooked orzo in the bowl with the parsley mixture and goat cheese. Add the tomatoes and toss until well mixed. Eat while hot.

Name that tuna

The escolar, Lepidocybium flavobrunneum,
which has been sold as white tuna and
Chilean sea bass.

You can't tuna fish? Heck, you can't even tell it's a tuna by looking at it.


The non-profit oceans conservation group Oceana last week announced the results of one of the largest seafood fraud investigations to date, revealing just how many seafood sellers around the United States are less than honest about their offerings.

The study compiled data from more than 1,200 seafood samples from 674 retailers in 21 states between 2010 to 2012. DNA testing showed that 33 percent of those samples were mislabeled or posing as fish that they were not. Samples claimed to be tuna and snapper had the highest fail rates, at 59 percent and 87 percent, respectively. Only seven of 120 samples of “red snapper” purchased nationwide actually proved to be red snapper. The rest belonged to any of six different misrepresented species.

As Quartz reporter Christopher Mims points out, in Chicago, Austin, New York and Washington D.C., every single sushi restaurant sampled sold mislabeled tuna. In 84 percent of samples, “white tuna” turned out to be escolar, a fatty fish that produces a side effect that I won't mention on a food blog.

As Mims writes, if you’ve ever wondered why the sushi in the display case is so plentiful given the dwindling supply of tuna around the world, well, this may explain it.

The good news is that the fish in your grocery store has a 82 percent chance of being what it is labeled as, compared to 62 percent in all restaurants and a mere 26 percent in sushi restaurants. Another reason that maybe you should be cooking at home more often.