Savory tart centerpiece of vegetarian meal

Photographs ©2014,  Lori Korleski Richardson

Now that we're back from vacation, it's time to get back to the gym and start eating better.

One way to make sure we get the variety of vegetables that are the key to good health is to have at least one vegetarian meal a week.

Tonight's was a savory chard and onion tart, with a side of carrot salad on a bed of arugula.

I made the tart in a 10-inch spring-form pan for easier serving (it also looks good enough to serve to company that way, especially decorated with nasturtiums from your herbicide-free garden. The cheery salad is a simple and delicious Alice Waters creation that depends in large part on the freshness of the carrots, parsley and lemon, and the quality of the olive oil.

Savory chard and onion tart

Ingredients for crust
1 ¾ cups flour
pinch kosher salt
1 stick (4 ounces) frozen unsalted butter, grated into small curls
Ice water

Instructions for crust
Combine flour and salt in a medium mixing bowl and grate in the frozen butter; mix with two knives or a pastry blender until texture resembles stone-ground cornmeal. Add 4 tablespoons ice water, mixing with a fork, until the dough comes together. You may need to add another tablespoon or two. Handle dough as little as possible, form into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Roll out the dough and place in a 10-inch spring-form pan or 9-inch tart pan. The dough sides need to be at least an inch deep. Refrigerate until the filling is ready.

Ingredients for filling
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large finely chopped onion
1 pound chard, stems removed, chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 ounces chèvre or ricotta
¼ cup evaporated milk or cream
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
½ teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg (or to taste)
Dash cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons blanched, slivered almonds, lightly toasted

Instructions for filling and assembly
Warm the olive oil in a skillet over medium-low heat, then add the onion and cook until it is soft and golden, add the chard, oregano, salt and pepper, and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Allow the mixture to cool as you preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the eggs, cheeses, milk or cream and nutmeg, then add the cooled chard-onion mixture. Pour into the crust, sprinkle with the nuts and bake 45 minutes. Serves 4 as an entree, 8 as a side dish and 16 as an appetizer.

Alice Water's Spring Salad
Serves 2

Ingredients
1/2 pound of carrots, peeled and shredded
1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon white sea salt or kosher salt
Juice of one lemon
¼ teaspoon cayenne or paprika
¾ cup good quality olive oil
¼ cup chopped parsley

Instructions
Put the carrots in a mixing bowl. Mash the garlic and the salt into a paste. Mix it with the lemon juice and any spices you are using. Toss with olive oil; add parsley at end. Chill.

Vaccinate, yes - salt, maybe

Image by 3D4Medical.com/Getty Images

In this week's Science magazine, a study suggests that a buildup of chloride levels in rodent fetuses damages their developing neurons, and prevents a switch that moderates the extreme activity from engaging in newborns, thus triggering autistic behavior. The report focuses on the use of a chloride-lowering drug, bumetanide, that seems to be helpful even after the young have developed autistic symptoms.

Fifty or 60 years ago, doctors used to recommend that women cut out extra salt (sodium chloride) in their diet, to ease the swelling and risk of pre-eclampsia, but lately, doctors have advised women that they should stick to their regular diets during pregnancy - and we know how much salt is in fast food and processed foods. Is it too much? Could it be the trigger?

Anecdotally, my mother kept to a salt-free diet while she was pregnant with me and had no problems with delivery. When my dad returned from Japan, she couldn't keep to the salt restriction, and they had to use forceps to deliver my brother.

Growing up, we all had to be vaccinated, and many of those vaccinations, such as for small pox and polio, were done in school. I cannot recall any autistic kids, although I had several classmates with other mental disabilities.

I didn't have my first taste of McDonald's until I was in my teens. But we probably got plenty of salt from canned goods, sauerkraut, cured ham and sausages.

Although I suspect a link to high salt consumption and autism spectrum disorders, more study needs to be done. I don't have the same wariness of vaccination; the overwhelming good vaccines do outweighs the fear that they may do harm, and so far, scientific studies have not linked them to autism.

Here's the news release on the study:

A drug given to pregnant mice with models of autism prevents autistic behavior in their offspring, a new report shows, and though the drug could not be administered prenatally in humans (there is no way to screen for autism in human fetuses), clinical trials of this drug administered later in development, in young children who have already developed autistic symptoms, are showing progress. The causes of autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, are complex. Prolonged excitation of brain neurons seems partly to blame. Thus, GABA - the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain - has drawn attention; GABA typically excites neurons in the brain of a growing fetus and then quiets them during birth, a switch mediated by oxytocin from the mother, and one that has a protective effect. But in autism, this switch doesn’t happen. The neurons remain excited because chloride - a key signaling molecule - builds to higher concentrations than it should. In the aforementioned clinical trials, a chloride-lowering drug called bumetanide appeared to have restored the GABA switch in children with ASD, reducing the severity of both autism and Asperger syndrome. To better understand if bumetanide affects the cellular processes that underlay the GABA switch in the way they believed it did (by lowering chloride levels), and to determine whether restoring the switch alone could reduce autistic symptoms, Roman Tyzio and colleagues (several of whom had been involved in the trials) studied two rodent models of autism. Oxytocin didn’t signal from mother to baby in the pregnant rodents, the researchers found, and as a result, chloride built to higher concentrations than it should have inside fetal neurons. By injecting the mothers with bumetanide, however, the researchers were able to reduce chloride levels to their appropriate amount - and in turn, to restore the GABA switch. Critically, mouse offspring exposed to this treatment didn’t demonstrate traits of autism. This study provides support for use of bumetanide in ongoing clinical trials in young children who have already developed autistic symptoms. 

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.

Nothing fishy about marinated salmon

If you've been lucky enough to have a friend of Scandinavian descent bring gravlax to a party, you know how delicious marinated salmon can be. You may also have thought, "What a lot of work" or "I could never eat that much fish at home." Also, it may be hard to find fresh dill at certain times of the year.

A side of salmon is a pretty party dish, but a bit impractical for a weeknight dinner unless you regularly feed a dozen or so people a sitting.

But marinated salmon can be a blessing when you buy a fillet and find yourself invited out for dinner or an unexpected meeting demands your presence. When you get home, fix the smaller recipe below, and a few days later, slice, add bread and a green salad and you've got a light midweek meal.

First, the original recipe, for a whole side of salmon, filleted, from Trina Hanemann's "The Scandinavian Cookbook" (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008, 224 pages, $30).  My version for a half-pound salmon fillet is below it.

Marinated Salmon 
Serves 20-24

Ingredients
1 orange
1 lemon
1 1/2 cups superfine sugar
10 ounces sea salt
1 side of salmon, filleted
For serving:
1 orange
1 lemon
Toasted bread
Green salad

Instructions
If you have a zester, use it to remove the zest from the orange and the lemon it will look fresh and tasty.  Alternatively, finely grate the zest from the fruit. Mix the zest with the sugar and salt.
Use tweezers to remove any pin bones from the salmon fillet. Spread the zest mixture evenly over the entire surface of the salmon, then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 days.
After 3 days, take the salmon out of the refrigerator, remove the plastic wrap and wipe off the marinade with a paper towel. Wrap the salmon in plastic wrap and freeze for 12 hours, then take it out of the freezer and defrost it.
Before it is completely thawed, put the salmon on a board and cut it into thin slices with a very sharp knife. The traditional cutting technique starts diagonally at one corner of the salmon and works toward the center of the fillet.
To serve, remove the zest from the remaining orange and lemon and sprinkle it over the salmon. Serve with toasted bread and a green salad.

Lori K's little marinated salmon
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 lemon
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 pound salmon fillet
Crusty bread
Salad

Instructions
Zest the lemon; save the fruit. (Wrap it in plastic to keep it from drying out and put it in the refrigerator.)
Combine the sugar and salt in a clean coffee mill and blend until the sugar is superfine. Add to the zest.
Pull out with tweezers any bones left in the fillet. Spread the sugar mixture over the fillet and either put it in a covered glass dish, or wrap in plastic, and put in the refrigerator.
After three days, take it out, wipe off the marinade with a paper towel, rewrap it and put it in the freezer while you're at work. When you come home, take it out of the freezer to defrost. When it is almost defrosted, cut it in thin slices diagonally with a sharp knife and remove them from the skin.
Arrange on plate. Cut the reserved lemon in half, remove the seeds and squeeze over the salmon. Serve with crusty bread and salad.

The secret to a juicy turkey

Lots of people say they hate turkey because it’s too dry. 

The solution: Begin your preparation the day before. 

Start with a fresh turkey. I figure a pound per person, and that's usually enough to have some leftovers.

Cut off the thighs and legs; season and cook separately. I like to boil them in a mixture of duck fat and oil until they are really tender, take the meat off the bone, then crisp it up in a hot oven for a few minutes before serving. You can even cook them the day ahead if you want to do this; it will just require a little more time to crisp up the meat.

Cut off the back and use it to make a nice stock, along with the neck, heart and gizzard. Cook the liver separately.

Get a 5-gallon bucket and line it with a food-quality plastic bag. Pour in a gallon of orange juice mixed with a cup of salt and any seasonings that you like. Put the breast (a 5-gallon bucket can hold two breasts from up to 20-pound turkeys) in the brine overnight.

Thanksgiving Day: Drain and dry before rubbing with oil or butter. Start your oven at 450 degrees and after you put the breast in, turn it down to 350.  Roast until the internal temperature is 165 degrees (about 12 minutes per pound). Do not baste, and keep oven door closed as much as possible.

When the internal temperature reaches 165, take it out of the oven and just let it rest in a warm place that's free of drafts. (If you want the skin to stay crispy, do not tent.) Wait at least 10 and up to 30 minutes. Slice and serve.

It won't look like a picture postcard this way, but it'll taste a whole lot better.

Pity the poor eating establishments

If there's a restaurant you dearly love, schedule a dinner there. Restaurants, even as they try to lure customers with meal deals, will find it very hard to stay afloat as inflationary pressures increase.

But as a Dow Jones Newswire story indicates, the meal deals may be coming to an end, and the public is getting more frugal. Since vegetable garden seed sales are higher than they've been since Victory Garden days, that public may be staying home just to use up all the new vegetables that are arriving in their kitchens.

And that's not a bad thing. Although restaurant food tastes good, sometimes better than what most people can cook at home, that taste comes at a price, in terms of calories (doesn't EVERYTHING taste better with butter on it?), salt and, occasionally, food handling practices that can endanger people with allergies or compromised immune systems. And like most skills, cooking gets easier and better the more you do it.