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. 

Eggs-actly why do Americans refrigerate eggs?

Penny, Betty and Veronica, ©2013, Lori Korleski Richardson

As a home poultry keeper, I was told NOT to wash eggs and that they would keep much longer unwashed. (Not that I ever got too many eggs.) So it always made me wonder why commercial egg producers did so. I figured that the hens were kept in such squalor that it was necessary.

But the real eye opener in the article below was that there is actually a vaccine against salmonella and that it's not required in the United States. Really? When you have to search for chicken feed that doesn't have antibiotics? When we've had so many cases of salmonella that almost no one makes a good Caesar salad dressing anymore and all eggs (low in fat and a good, inexpensive source of protein) are suspect?

In a somewhat related vein, how can my dog be vaccinated for Lyme disease, and although I live on property frequented by deer, and have found several ticks on me, there's no vaccine for me?

The egg article is here: http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-your-eggs-1465309529

I yam what I yam

There's not much data that links this chemical with cancer, but I think the kid has a point.

Prayers answered with pralines

My friend Ray Laskowitz is a marvelous chronicler of the street life of New Orleans, capturing not only the color but the mood with his camera. (You can view his work on his website, laskowitzpictures.org.) I love his work, but I can't look at any scene from that city without thinking about food.

One of the simplest pleasures of New Orleans is the praline. It's pronounced prah-leen, not pray-lean or rhyming with fraulein. And it's made with pecans. That's pah-cons, not pea-cans.

Now that we have that straight, here's a good recipe for them. I've tried ones made with cream, but they're a little too caramel-y, and ones that just have sugar and butter are too sugary. This recipe came out just like the ones that I first bought on the street more than 30 years ago.

Lori K's New Orleans Pralines

Ingredients
2 cups light brown sugar, packed
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup fat-free evaporated milk
2 ½ cups pecans, halved
1 tablespoon butter

Instructions
Combine sugars and milk in a heavy 2-quart saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until mixture forms a thick syrup. If the mixture separates, whisk until smooth again.

Add pecans and butter and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for another 5 minutes.

Remove sauce pan to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes.

Use a tablespoon to drop rounded balls of the mixture onto sheet wax paper or foil, leaving about 3 inches between each ball for pralines to spread. Work quickly to get all of them made before the mixture starts to harden. Allow to cool.

Makes about 24 candies.

Judy Rodgers, rest in peace - you made a lot of people happy

Judy Rodgers
in a San Francisco
Chronicle photograph
from 2003.

Judy Rodgers, restaurateur and cook extraordinaire, died Monday, Dec. 2. She was 57. So am I.

She had struggled with her health for several years and last winter was finally diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

She will be missed, for her cooking and spirit of trying new ways of cooking old favorites; if you ever had a Zuni Cafe roast chicken, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

This was a review of "The Zuni Cafe Cookbook" that ran in The Sacramento Bee in 2002. If you ever need a recipe from it, I still have my copy and would be happy to copy it for you.

By Lori Korleski Richardson
BEE STAFF WRITER
Judy Rodgers, welcome.
Unlike many chefs who seek to dazzle readers with their oh-so-cutting-edge creativity and slavish attention to detail, Rodgers would be comfortable in an ordinary kitchen. And you should invite her into yours - well, at least virtually, which you can do by picking up "The Zuni Cafe Cookbook" (Norton, $35).
Rodgers has succeeded in bringing forth a cookbook that elevates quality ingredients to their ultimate best, without a lot of bells and whistles. Her introductory quote, from the patriarch of the French family that set her on her way to becoming a chef, says it all: "Méfie-toi du cinéma dans la cuisine" - "Do not trust food for show."
The chef-owner of San Francisco's Zuni Cafe, Rodgers learned the sensuous side of food as a teen, when she went to live in Roanne with a family of restaurateurs. There she learned that even food as simple as a ham sandwich can be turned into something special, although she sampled fresh whole truffles steamed in Sauternes as well. She took extensive notes, but did not learn to cook then. She came back to the States to go to college in Berkeley, but ended up learning the cooking trade slowly at the feet of Alice Waters, who let Rodgers prepare lunches at Chez Panisse from the dinner leftovers.
She spent time later learning American cooking from Marion Cunningham at the Union Hotel in Benicia, and spent time in Florence, Umbria and Sicily to learn the roots of great Italian cooking.
And if the travelogue of an introduction isn't enough reading, Rodgers goes on to instruct the reader how to approach planning and cooking a meal. It's a lot to ask before one even gets to the recipes (43 pages), but it's not to be missed. She also weaves in stories with the recipes. I tried to keep "Zuni" by my bedside to read before going to sleep, but it made me want to get up and try things.
And later, when I did try some of the recipes - Zuni's signature roast chicken, the spicy squid stew that simmered in its own ink with notes of citrus and roasted peppers, the salt-roasties (creamer potatoes roasted in rock salt which were succulent and hardly salty at all), the four-minute egg gribiche (the four minutes refers to the time the egg is cooked; the whisking of a cup of olive oil into the sauce took much longer), the cornmeal biscotti, the espresso granita with whipped cream - I was not disappointed. All the recipes were straightforward, easy to follow, and the aromas made me anticipate the outcomes, which were excellent. Every recipe, even the desserts, comes with wine recommendations by Gerald Asher.
This is not a book for folks with hypertension. Rodgers believes in salting food early in the cooking process for maximum flavor, and uses more sodium than many health-conscious folks would. The food, however, never tastes overly salty to the average palate.
"The Zuni Cafe Cookbook" is ambitious enough to thrill experienced cooks, but it would be a good first cookbook for anyone who appreciates fine food and wants to learn how to work it into one's life, since it focuses more on technique than following a recipe to the nth degree.
Rodgers covers the basics - what cookware to purchase, how to make various stocks, sauces, a discussion of what to look for in common ingredients such as garlic and tomatoes, and even how to hard-boil an egg. I couldn't find a recipe that required a food processor - rather a remarkable feat for a modern cookbook, but a welcome one for cooks who don't have that expensive appliance. It has 50 small black and white photographs to illustrate various techniques. But its directions are somewhat - and perhaps intentionally - sketchy. They may help a confident cook experiment and grow, but may be somewhat confusing to the novice.
The 24 color photographs by Gentl & Hyers/Edge are stunning and focus the attention on the food, not fancy designs on sauces or pretty graffiti on the edges of the plates. It may not be food for show, but it's certainly food you'll want to show your guests.

Farm-to-fork ideas - and a little plea

Fresh tomatoes are ripe in late summer and early fall. Photographs by Lori Korleski Richardson.

A former Sacramento Bee co-worker, Chris Macias, has a nice long piece in today's Bee discussing ways to improve the Farm-to-Fork Festival that drew more than 25,000 to the event in late September. (For those into planning ahead, a wine component of the event is tentatively set for Sept. 18, and the festival and gala dinner for Sept 27 and 28, respectively.)

Fresh basil is available at the same
time as tomatoes.

The ideas and suggestions are good, but as far as farm-to-fork goes, I'd be happy if every restaurant would take a pledge not to use the same hothouse or picked green for shipping then force "ripened" tomatoes (the only ones available for 9 months out of the year) during the duration of tomato season. Not every restaurant can make it using all local produce, but just using the tomatoes that one's area is known for during the short window they are available would be a start.

And consumers, stop ordering salads that have tomatoes on them in out-of-season months. If there's no demand, you will find out what raw tomatoes really taste like and enjoy them fresh only in season - and restaurants can move on to making salads featuring other tasty, in-season ingredients.

Good gravy!

I saw Jamie Oliver's post on weekend roasts (how traditional!) and they sounded very good. I don't do roasts much anymore since they are either a.) fatty or b.) expensive, or both. But I still love the taste of a great roast chicken, and the one on his site looked mighty delicious (the recipe is here.)

But when I rolled over to his recipe for gravy and saw he had out the sieve, I went uh-oh. And sure enough, he had the drippings being skimmed of fat and then flour added to the liquid. That process almost always results in lumps.

For really good gravy that has a good color and no lumps, first make a roux. For each cup of liquid you have (I'm assuming you've simmered the neck and giblets while the chicken was cooking or have some good quality stock plus the defatted part of the drippings from the pan), put 1 tablespoon of the fat you skimmed off from the drippings into a large cast-iron skillet on medium heat until it's almost smoking. Add a like amount of flour and stir the mixture constantly until it's a deep brown, turning down the heat if it's browning too fast (if it burns, you will need to throw it out and start over). When it's a very deep brown, whisk in the liquid, turn up the heat a bit and bring it to a low boil. When it thickens, remove from the heat and serve. The only lumps would be the dripping solids and some bits of vegetable, and if you want it perfectly smooth, sieve your dripping liquid before adding to the pan.

I rarely use a sieve. Bring on the full taste!