Thursday, June 18, 2009

What’s In Your Burger?

In case you still wanted more ideas for alternative, non-beef burgers after reading my June 17 article, here’s a tasty one with shrimp and Creole seasonings:

Creole Shrimp Burgers
Recipe adapted from Great Year-Round Grilling in the Southeast (Lyons Press, $19.95) by Ellen Brown, who says that scallops or a firm white fish such as cod or tilapia can be substituted for the shrimp.
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 celery rib, rinsed, trimmed and chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, and finely chopped
1½ pounds large (21 to 30 per pound) raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
½ teaspoon hot pepper sauce, or to taste
Cajun seasoning to taste (or 2 to 3 teaspoons)
4 to 6 long submarine rolls, split crosswise in half
Lettuce and tomato for garnish
Tartar Sauce (recipe below)

1.  Set up a grill for dual-temperature grilling with high heat on one side and medium heat on the other. (For charcoal grills, this means a layer 3 to 4 coals deep for high-heat side and a layer 1 or 2 coals deep for the medium side.)
2. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, celery and red pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, for 5 to 7 minutes, or until vegetables are soft. Scrape mixture into a mixing bowl.
3. Finely chop ½ pound of the shrimp and add to the bowl. Puree remaining 1 pound shrimp in a food processor. Add puree to the bowl, along with chives, parsley, hot sauce, and Cajun seasoning. Form 8 to 12 patties, each about ½ inch thick.
4. Grill rolls cut side down until toasted, about 1 minute. Set aside.
5. Sear shrimp burgers over high heat for 2 minutes on each side. Then cook over medium heat for 2 more minutes on each side, or just until cooked through. Serve immediately on rolls with lettuce, tomato and tartar sauce.
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
Tartar Sauce
Recipe adapted from Great Year-Round Grilling in the Southeast.
1½ cups mayonnaise
¼ cup finely chopped cornichons, or other small pickles
3 tablespoons small capers, rinsed, drained and chopped
2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon or 1 teaspoon dried tarragon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Combine mayo, pickles, capers, vinegar, shallot, parsley and tarragon in a mixing bowl. Whisk well. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate up to 3 days, if not using immediately.
Makes 2 cups.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

What’s in Your Lunch Box?

Are you trying to save money by eating out less? One way to cut your food costs is brown bag it.

We’d like to write about it. And I’d like to hear from you if you are making and taking your lunch to work, espeically if this is a new thing for you.

Even if you’re just packing leftovers, I’d like to chat with you. How many times a week do you pack lunch instead of eating out? Are you sticking to sandwiches? Or are you getting creative with salads? Do you dig out an old Transformers lunch box, circa 1984? Or are you using one of those sleek insulated bags? Maybe you have some favorite recipes you’d like to share. Get in touch. My e-mail is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and my phone number is 727-7302. Don’t forget to let me know a way to get back in touch if I’m not around.

Hail to the Chef

Local chef Jeff Bacon just got elected vice president for the Southeast region of the national board of directors of the American Culinary Federation.
This is a national professional organization of chefs.

Bacon has been incredibly active in events for the Triad chapter of the ACF, many of which raise money for local charities.

Bacon also has put his money where his mouth is when it comes to helping others. He left a comfy chef’s job at a retirement home to work for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina. And he did it for one reason only: to fulfill his dream of opening a training program for the poor or underprivileged to teach them how to cook professionally. That dream has come true. The Triad Community Kitchen has trained more than 100 folks and helped them get jobs in kitchens across the Triad.

Bacon is a great person, to boot.

Besides, he has a killer name for a chef.

Congratulations, Jeff.

(That’s Jeff on the right in the photo, teaching a student at the Triad Community Kitchen.)

Friday, June 12, 2009

Food and Freedom

The folks who petitioned the Obama administration to start a vegetable garden at the White House received fresh inspiration earlier this year when the Obamas announced that they would do just that.

Now those same folks are petitioning state governors to celebrate Independence Day in farm-fresh style to inspire yet more Americans to eat local.

The petitions, which will be submitted to governors of all 50 states during the last week of June, will ask that their Fourth of July celebrations will consist of a meal of locally grown food.

The groups behind this are Kitchen Gardeners International, a nonprofit that promotes home gardens, and the Food and Society Fellows of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which gives fellowships to people to promote sustainable agriculture.

I fear they may not have planned this enough in advance. Don’t governors plan their Fourth more than a week in advance?

But the sentiment is a nice one, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt for the top state officials to promote their own state agriculture.

For more information, visit http://www.FoodIndependenceDay.org.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Another Virtual Nosh

I’ve always admired Mary Haglund’s food. Turns the proprietress of Mary’s Of Course started writing about food not so long ago, too, and you can follow along on her restaurant’s website, where she posts on her food blog. There aren’t a ton of entries, but they are long, hefty, satisfying reads about Mary and husband Samb’s road trips and of, course, eats. Mary has a nose and a mouth for tastiness, so I’m interested to see what she sniffs out, nibbles and digests.

She and Samb wrote about their honeymoon to New Mexico (where they consumed mass quantities of chile peppers, how jealous am I), a family trip to the beach, a short jaunt to Asheville (where they visited Salsa’s, one of my favorites).

Over Memorial Day, they visited Chapel Hill. Mary had me drooling over honeysuckle sorbet at Crook’s Corner, and cookies filled with pistachios and iced tea with rose water at the Mediterranean Deli (I lived on their hummus in college). And there are plenty of photos, too. Hubba, hubba, check out that salad!

Thanks for sharing, Mary. Keep’em coming.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Watching Over Animal Welfare

After I wrote about Wild Turkey Farm’s involvement in an animal-welfare program last week, I got an e-mail from Farm Sanctuary, another nonprofit that devotes itself to the humane treatment of animals.

Farm Sanctuary has done its own report, called “The Truth Behind the Labels,” on the various labels and animal-welfare certification programs around. It appears to come to similar conclusions as a report I cited in my article by the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

The 71-page report and the shorter summary, accesssed through the links above, provide a good comparison and contrast of the various programs. In particular, it points out how varying standards for such terms as “free-range,” “natural,” and “humanely raised,”  make them destined to become practically meaningless, if they aren’t already.

Even the USDA’s certified organic program is not perfect, which highlights the needs for these independent third-party programs called Certified Humane, American Humane Certified and Animal Welfare Approved.

And I think it also highlights the need for additional folks to watch over these certifying organizations.

By the way, I give Farm Sanctuary credit for an even-handed report, despite their inherent conflict with these organizations that certify meat operations. Farm Sanctuary will never fully endorse any of these programs because, as it says on its Web site, “We maintain that the words ‘humane’ and ‘slaughter’ are mutually exclusive.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Doughnut Day

Another one of those official-sounding days probably made up by some marketer, National Doughnut Day is here, Friday, June 5.

The folks at Krispy Kreme, naturally, let me know about this.

And they are putting their money where their mouths are by giving away one free doughnut to every customer today. No purchase necessary.

Dunkin’ Donuts was not as on the ball, in that it didn’t send me a press release. But I did see on http://www.dunkindonuts.com that the company has a similar offer of a free doughnut on Friday. But unlike KK, you have to buy a drink first.

The folks at Hostess aren’t giving away doughnuts, but they did give me some trivia:
—The creation of the hole in the middle is said to have a practical reason: the centers of the solid cakes weren’t cooking in the center. Making a hole allowed the centers to cook through evenly.
—America’s favorite type is glazed (KK could have told us that, eh?). Chocolate, powdered sugar and plain come next, in that order.

I will not be eating a doughnut today, because my family is trying to cut out sugar, at least temporarily. You can read about our sugarless adventures in my June 10 column at http://www.journalnow.com/hastings.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Hunt, Then Eat

I love a potluck. Sampling a dozen or more homemade dishes is my idea of a good time.

And it helps that people almost always bring a favorite, tried-and-true dish to a potluck. So almost everything there is sure to be good.

Last weekend, I experienced a first—a pot luck combined with a scavenger hunt.

Some friends, it turns out, had been itching to have a scavenger hunt for a while. They decided to have a pot luck at a local park afterward. Just for good measure, they also made it a fundraiser for a local nonprofit. Twenty points on the hunt list was a $10 donation.

The hunt itself was great fun. Each family made up a team and had an hour and a half to gather items from an eclectic list. The list was varied enough so that everyone is my family was able to contribute at least one item. Several items involved picture-taking, too, so all in all it was a true family event.

Then all the families gathered to show off their loot, get scored and finally to chow down.

As usual, I ended up stuffed to the gills—on chicken, corn and bean salad, tortilla casserole, spinach casserole, about six kinds of pasta salad and a whole lot more. 

But it was a good stuffed.

Best of all, it was an afternoon that combined private family quality time, group socializing and good food. What more can you ask?

Friday, May 29, 2009

Hot Dogs Hot

A recent story from The Associated Press talks about how hot-dog sales aren’t hurting one bit during the recession. In fact, they are going up.

Can anyone say “cheap meat”?

Oh, yes, cheap fatty meats are looking mighty good these days. People will gladly put up with clogged arteries if they can save a few bucks when money is tight.

(Don’t get me started on all those 99-cent fast-food deals.)

The AP quotes Nielsen figures that say hot-dog sales went up 5.1 percent from April 2008 to April 2009, to $2.1 billion. That’s a lot of dogs.

Interestingly, Sara Lee, which owns Ball Park, is suing Kraft, which owns Oscar Mayer, saying that Kraft’s ads bragging about “100 percent pure beef in the Oscar Mayer Jumbo Beef Franks is not accurate. Beef is the only meat in those dogs, but they also have water, salt, a few chemicals, etc.

Of course, I think Sara Lee is probably a lot more peeved about Kraft’s claims that its Oscar Mayer franks were preferred in a taste test over Ball Park and Hebrew National.

In my opinion, hot-dog preferences are like a lot of other foods. They depend on what you were weaned on as much as or more than actual taste. Does Coke or Pepsi taste better? It most likely depends on what mom and dad fed you early on. Same with hot dogs.

I love a good hot dog as much as anyone else, but eating them three times a week reduces their appeal after a while.

If I do start to get tired of hot dogs, making a Chicago-style dog can help change things up a bit. This is a crazy, over-the-top, kitchen-sink kind of dog. You could argue that the meat matters little here, because it has so much piled up on top of it.

But if you’re one of those people eating a lot of hot dogs to trim your grocery bill, you might want to give these Chicago dogs a try.

Chicago Hot Dog
This recipe is based on information at http://www.hotdogchicago style.com.

Large all-beef franks
Poppy-seed buns (long, more like deli or hoagie rolls to fit all the toppings)
Sweet pickle relish
Yellow mustard
Dill pickle spears
Chopped white onion (optional)
Ripe tomato, cut into wedges
Pickled serrano peppers, whole
Celery salt
1. Steam or grill the franks.
2. Lightly steam the buns until soft and moist but not soggy. This can be done in a microwave by wrapping them in paper towels and heating for about 1 minute. Or use a steamer insert in a pot for 20 to 30 seconds - and watch it carefully to make sure the buns don’t get soggy.
3. Place one frank on a bun. Squirt or spread mustard on the frank, from one end to the other. Add a generous amount of relish. Sprinkle onions, if using, on the dog. Place two tomato wedges end to end between the dog and the top part of the bun. Place one pickle spear between the dog and the bottom of the bun. Place two whole peppers on top of the dog. Sprinkle with a dash of celery salt.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Have a Cold One

Last year, I wrote a short story about a group of 20-something friends traveling across North Carolina on a road trip with a mission—to visit each of the state’s microbreweries, from mountains to sea, in nine days. They were armed with some borrowed camera equipment, and recorded their adventure along the way, intending to make a movie when they were done.

Well, all of seven of them survived (they took turns being the designated driver, but they were crammed in a seatless cargo van), and now their documentary, Beer Y’all, is playing around the state. Originally titled Drunken State, Beer Ya’ll includes visits to more than 25 NC breweries, including Winston-Salem’s Foothills Brewing Company. Check out the trailer. You can even get a glimpse of the (unmistakable) Wachovia Building as the Beer Y’all crew came through town.

What’s so interesting about this film is that it probably wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago. It was only in 2005 that state lawmakers passed legislation allowing for higher gravity beers (beers with a higher percentage of alcohol, up to 15 percent, whereas 6 percent was the legal limit before). That, and growing interest in locally-crafted foods have really fueled the growth of small beermakers and creative, tasty brews across the state.

One of the filmmakers, Curt Arledge, hopes to set up a Winston-Salem screening this summer. Stay tuned…

Update: Curt tells me there’s a screening scheduled for Aug. 6 at the Garage, 110 W. Seventh St., at 9 pm.