Look for the store's label

Interesting item from the PR Newswire: The introduction of high quality, store-brand organic products has changed consumer perceptions of private label grocery brands, according to results of the forthcoming J.D. Power and Associates Private Label Industry Report announced at the IRI CPG Summit in Las Vegas. In particular, consumer attitudes about many store brands have shifted - rather than being considered low-quality with bland packaging, private label brands are being thought of as unique and with having quality commensurate with that of traditional brands.

Kill da wabbit

Blame Bugs Bunny for rabbit not being more available in grocery stores and on restaurant menus. Can anyone order it without a vision of gray and white fur chomping on a carrot appearing before their eyes? Or that little cottontail bounding away?

Nonetheless, rabbit is a healthful protein, lean and with a taste similar to chicken. The bones are somewhat of a problem, but many dishes suggest an initial cooking of the meat, cooling and removing the bones before adding the meat to a sauce.

My first experience with rabbit was while I was a child in the Azores, on a vacation in a fancy hotel that featured five-course meals every night (soup, fish, meat, cheese and dessert). It was barbecued and delicious. 

Barbecued Rabbit with Tarragon-Dijon Marinade

Ingredients:
3 to 3 ½ pound young dressed rabbit, cut up
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup each Dijon mustard and white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh minced tarragon
1 clove garlic, minced (optional)

Instructions:
Rinse rabbit and pat dry. Arrange in a single layer in a shallow dish. If it has not been brined, salt lightly (but if you are on a salt-free diet, the other ingredients should be enough seasoning).
Whisk together the rest of the ingredients for marinade; pour over rabbit. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or until next day, turning occasionally.
Lift rabbit from marinade and drain briefly. Barbecue rabbit by indirect heat, placing rabbit on grill directly above drip pan. Cover barbecue and adjust dampers as necessary to maintain an even heat. Cook, basting often with marinade, until meat is white at bone, at least 160 degrees internal temperature (about 35 minutes).
Serves 4 to 5

Recipe adapted from ExoticMeats.com

For the non-squeamish among you, there's an excellent video on preparing a freshly killed rabbit for cooking on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGWefUacuVM

DC eats

Well, we ended up a little pressed for time, so we ate at the new Capitol visitors center. For a cafeteria, the food wasn't bad, just a little pricey (almost $20 for two salads and two cups of coffee. Which, considering that two Pellegrinos at the Willard came to $15, isn't THAT bad). One of the salad choices looked pretty good: golden potatoes and red onions on a bed of arugula. It would have tasted better had it been made with Yukon Golds or yellow Finnish potatoes instead of Russets. The romaine was very bright and crisp. And the bacon bits were real and meaty. They had a balsamic vinegar dressing. 

Walking along Pennsylvania Avenue, I noticed a lot less beef on the posted menus than there used to be, and short ribs seemed to be the preferred cut. And almost every restaurant had at least one fish offering. Maybe eating healthier is getting to be the norm ... or is everyone just saving room for dessert?

Photograph: The Willard Intercontnental, Washington, DC

DC -- to dine for

Today we head off to DC for a little pleasure (Capitol visitors center), a little business (Hetch Hetchy) and a little remembering (Jim's dad and other Alzheimer's victims at a candlelight vigil at the Lincoln Memorial). And a little eating, of course.

I have no idea what the day holds; the best food we've had in DC has been around DuPont Circle, but I don't think we'll be heading that way today. So will it be a hot dog stand or chili today, or something more nutritious? Stay tuned.

The food revolution is now in season

For those of you who don't read the New York Times business section, here's a link to their story on the food revolution. And when it makes it to the business page, you know it's made it to movement status.

Photograph of Alice Waters at the farmers market: Suzan Walsh/Associated Press

Bananas and toffee and cream, oh my!

Banana cream pie was one of my favorite childhood desserts, and in Sacramento, my favorite was the one my friend Elaine did for the restaurant she and her husband David owned, Bamboo.

But the Brits one-upped us in the 1970s when the owners of The Hungry Monk, a restaurant in East Sussex, invented Banoffi Pie, which combines the flavors of banana and toffee. It's really easy, too.

Banoffi Pie

Ingredients
3 cans sweetened condensed milk
Pinch of salt
1 9-inch deep-dish pie crust
3 large bananas
1 1/2 cups chilled heavy cream
1 tablespoon packed light brown sugar

Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees.
Pour condensed milk into pie plate, sprinkle with salt and cover tightly with foil. Put in a roasting pan, then add about a half inch of boiling water. Bake, refilling pan to halfway with water about every 40 minutes, until milk is thick and a deep golden caramel color, about 2 hours. Remove pie plate from water bath and transfer toffee to a bowl, then chill toffee, uncovered, until it is cold, about 1 hour.
While toffee is chilling, clean pie plate and bake empty pie crust in it (pie weights will keep it from puffing up too much). Cool crust completely in pan on a rack, about 20 minutes.
Spread toffee evenly in crust, and chill, uncovered, 15 minutes.
Cut bananas into 1/4-inch-thick slices and pile over toffee.
Beat cream with brown sugar in a clean bowl with an electric mixer until it just holds soft peaks, then mound over top of pie.
The toffee can be made up to two days before.

If you want to make your own pie crust, here's the original recipe from The Hungry Monk:
For the pastry:
1 cup plain flour
1 tablespoon superfine sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg and 1 egg yolk

Place the flour and sugar in a bowl, cut the butter into cubes and then rub it in to the flour / sugar until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Work in the egg to form a paste.
Chill for half an hour then roll out to 1/8-inch thick and line the deep pie tin.
Prick the base, line with parchment paper and weigh down with dry beans.
Cook for 15 minutes then remove the beans and paper.
Put the crust back into the oven and cook until it is evenly golden.
Remove from the oven and cool.

Waxman working for peanuts - and us

Thank God for Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., for keeping the heat on the Peanut Corporation of America. In doing so, he is compelling all of us to think about what blind faith we engage in every time we open a bag or box of processed food.

According to a story in The Washington Post today, Kellogg and other companies that bought products from PCA told lawmakers Friday that unlike Nestlé, they did not perform their own inspections. Instead, they relied on third-party audits common in the U.S. food industry:

David Mackay, Kellogg's chief executive, said his company trusted audits performed by the American Institute of Baking International, the biggest food-inspection firm in the country. The institute conducted scheduled inspections of PCA's facilities and never flagged serious problems. It issued a "certificate of achievement" and a "superior" rating last August, when PCA was getting results from internal laboratory tests that revealed a salmonella problem in its plant in Blakely, Ga., congressional investigators said.

"They gave PCA glowing reviews," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "The company was selected by PCA, paid by PCA, and realized that if they didn't give PCA a glowing review, they were not going to get hired again.

"They gave PCA a certificate of achievement," added Waxman, who held up the certificate in one hand and with the other waved a photograph, taken by federal investigators, of dead rodents inside a PCA facility. "How do you have a company that looks like this getting a certificate of achievement? . . . It really makes you think there must be something wrong."

It's too bad that other large conglomerates, who obviously only had the bottom line in their sights, didn't do what Nestlé did and send their own inspectors out for a check of the facilities.

It sounds like there was plenty of chances to stop the bad peanut butter from spreading, but at every juncture, profit won out over prevention. And a lot of innocent people paid the price.

I hope that more videos of these hearings make it out into the public domain, so us non-CSPAN junkies can see our public officials in action. The video below was taken earlier in the hearings.