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.

Smelt in your mouth

All photographs ©2013, Lori Korleski Richardson

Smelts are funny little fishes, not regularly found even in fish markets. But they were for sale, and at a good price, last week at one of my regular grocery stores, and I couldn't resist buying a half pound of those silvery little devils.

These smelts were from Canada, where they have been traditionally an important winter catch in the salt water mouths of rivers. According to Wikipedia, fishermen would go to customary locations over the ice using horses and sleighs. Smelt taken out of the cold salt water were much preferred to those taken in warm water. The smelts did not command a high price on the market, but provided a useful supplemental income. The smelts were "flash frozen" simply by leaving them on the ice and then sold to fish buyers.

Washed smelts drying on a dish towel.

My dad, who grew up in Wisconsin and would go ice fishing for fun, used to bring home smelts a few times a year to cook. He'd shake a whole bunch of them in a bag of flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, then into the pan they'd go for just a few minutes until they were golden, then out they'd come, sizzling and delicious.

But these were on the larger end of smelt scale, about scampi size, so I thought I'd give them a nice breading, with just their tail fins hanging out.

If they haven't been cleaned, do not despair. They are very easy to clean, since all you do is chop their heads off, slit open their tiny bellies and remove all their innards with a sweep of your fingernail. The bones dissolve as you fry them.

Wash and dry the fish. Next, season to taste. I used Mas Guapo, which is a Charlottesville-made concoction similar to Lawry's seasoning salt or McCormick's Season All, only with less sugar and more spice.

Beat an egg well, and put it in a pie plate. In another pie plate, put about 4 ounces of panko bread crumbs. Dip the seasoned smelts first in the egg, then in the crumbs to cover. Set on a cookie sheet. Dry for at least 30 minutes.

Smelt, dipped in egg, then in panko bread crumbs.

Heat about a 1/4 inch of canola oil in a large cast-iron skillet on medium heat until it is slightly smoking. Add the smelts, one at a time, leaving a little space between them. Cook until golden brown on the first side, flip and cook until golden brown on the other. Drain on paper towels and keep warm until they are all cooked.

I served them with a bowl of Progresso potato-bacon soup and a salad of romaine, orange bell pepper, grape tomato halves, goat cheese and slivered almonds, with a bowl of mixed canned fruit (apricots, pear and mandarin oranges) and vanilla yogurt for dessert. We were able to eat about half the smelts.

The next morning, we had the rest with eggs over easy, broiled tomatoes and a slice of toast. Two very good meals from those little silvery fish.

Grow green onions in your kitchen

Two onions from one onion bottom.
Photo by AngryRedhead, instructables.com

A delightful addition to omelets are chopped green onion tops. They have a mild oniony flavor, without the bite of the actual bulb, just a bit more assertive than chives.

Of course, you could just go to the store and get a bunch of green onions and use the green parts.

But my dad, the child of the Depression that he was, had another way to get them. I suppose that green onions were a little hard to come by in the winter in Wisconsin on the farm. So what did he do? He took the top part of a regular onion or two that would usually go in the trash and put it into a bowl of water. In a few days, green shoots would appear. When there would be enough for a couple of tablespoons of chopped tops, he'd "harvest" them.

It's a fun thing for your kids to do, to see something grow from practically nothing. And even better - it's free.

Another thing you can do if you have a little space in a sunny window is plant the bottom. Cut the onion about an inch from the root, plant it in loose soil and keep the soil most, not soggy. You may be able to get an extra onion or two from it!