WHAT WILL YOU DO?
Make chocolate pudding
Begin matching foods with elemental flavors
Learn how to make better choices
WHAT WILL YOU DISCOVER?
The incessant presence of fake food
The glory of herbs and spices
The real food chart
Let’s start with pudding. Because it once was real food. And even easy to make. Just milk, eggs, sugar, a little flavoring, and perhaps a thickener like flour or cornstarch.
But that was before the onslaught of fake puddings, industrial-age wonders that remind us of the real thing. First came packaged mixes; next, instant puddings; then flip-top cans; and finally, shelf-stable snack packs. They’re close enough, convenient enough, and cheap enough that many of us now mistake them for the real thing.1
To see what pudding had become after years of processing, Bruce and I bought four versions of these puddinglike conveniences. We opened or made each, lined them up on the kitchen counter, and did a taste test:2
One phrase appeared on all the labels: chocolate flavor. Three of them called themselves that by name: not chocolate pudding, but chocolate flavor pudding. Indeed, they were doped with artificial flavor. (And color, too. Which got us to wondering, what color would they be without the fake coloring?)
However, the My-T-Fine brand did call itself simply chocolate (no flavor after the word).
Ah, we thought, a real contender.
Then we noticed that right under the word chocolate was emblazoned artificial flavor added. Were they proud of it?
Despite all this artificial flavor, every brand listed cocoa among its ingredients. Why would something made with cocoa powder (real food for sure) also need artificial flavor?
The cocoa, while of sufficient weight to get it listed fairly high in the ingredient ranks, might be of such poor quality that it contributes little to the pudding’s overall flavor. Also, the chocolate flavor may need to be pumped up over and above any cocoa taste to cover the smack of the chemical residue. In other words, chemicals to the rescue of chemicals—although not enough. That metallic tang was hideously apparent in some versions.
But artificial flavors weren’t the only chemicals. By our initial definition, pudding includes eggs. But there wasn’t a yolk in our taste test. Not even powdered eggs, a processed substitute. Too bad, because egg proteins form the basic structure of pudding. In their loss, all the samples included a number of emulsifiers, thickeners, and stabilizers. That’s apparently the game: lose one real thing and add a crazy number of fake things.
None of which adds up to real food. It’s just chemical nostalgia: a processed fabrication that reminds us of a food we like.
Except all those additives aren’t beside the point. And they aren’t really additives, despite being so named. Instead, they make the concoction possible.
Once upon a time, the answers to modern life lay with these convenience products. They would give us more free time in an increasingly hyper world.
Unfortunately, speed comes at a chemical cost. Yes, artificial, manufactured, and processed additives have been developed so we can cook stuff more quickly. But then one thing leads to another. Other chemicals have to be added to make the now-doped products palatable again. Then still others have to be dumped inside to make the things last for weeks, months, and in some cases years. Do you really want to eat something that won’t spoil until your birthday next year—or even the year after that?
There are more than three thousand so-called additives for foods sold in the United States.3 They fall into three categories:
Mostly, these are vitamins, like the A added to milk. It’s great that it’s there: it’s necessary for strong eyesight. However, it’s found in (what should be) common foods: carrots, sweet potatoes, almost all leafy greens (like spinach), apricots, papayas, and mangos. Since we don’t eat real food anymore, we have had to add essential nutrients where they don’t naturally occur to make up for the deficit.
Most are allegedly tasteless, designed to make sure the product doesn’t absorb humidity or odors, doesn’t mold, doesn’t turn green, and doesn’t do any number of things a piece of food naturally does when left out for months.
These additives are replacements for natural fats and proteins, all of which eventually go bad or rancid. So these particular additives extend the expiration dates. Think about it: we live in a world where food can expire—a term once used to indicate death, but now used to indicate a sell-by date for food made in a facility hundreds or even thousands of miles from our homes.
Are expiration dates a sign of fake food? Of course not. Milk, yogurt, and other dairy products do have a shelf life, even with proper storage. Expiration dates keep us safe. But we’ve come to a point where they’re not a rarity on a handful of products. Rather, expiration dates are so common, they’re barely noticed. They indicate a fundamental problem: shelf life has become more important than taste or nutrition.
Three of the most common additives are these:
Butilated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) or Butilated Hydroxytoluene (BHT)
Organic compounds that preserve fats, keeping them from going rancid on the shelf. BHT is also used in jet fuel, exfoliating creams, and embalming fluids.
Erythorbic Acid and Sodium Erythorbate
A crystalline or granulated powder (the first is an acid and the second is a salt derived from it). Often made from beets or corn, it holds flavors stable over time—and increases shelf life by slowing down the formation of nitrosamines, known carcinogens in many preserved meats.
Sodium Benzoate
A granular salt that slows down the growth of bacteria and molds in acidic products including salad dressings, carbonated drinks, fruit juices, jams, and many condiments. It originated from a natural preservative found in plums, cranberries, and apples (benzoic acid) that does not dissolve very well and was thus reengineered for its life as a food additive. It’s also the stuff that makes fireworks whistle.
Because of chemical additives, a soft drink can taste sweet without sugar. Mac-and-cheese can still be called mac-and-cheese without any real cheese. Cookies can taste buttery without real butter. And a chicken breast can taste like, well, chicken, without the bone, skin, or proper maturation in the barnyard.
Don’t believe us? Check out the label on some of those packages of boneless, skinless breasts. It says they may contain up to 10 percent of a solution.… Then notice how the phrase trails off. Follow it down the packaging to discover that there’s salt water injected into the meat as well as artificial flavorings. If they didn’t add flavorings, what would the chicken breasts taste like?
Other food additives are more dangerous—like diacetyl, the chemical that gives a buttery flavor to items including microwave popcorn and hard candies. True, diacetyl adds no calories. That’s its strong suit. It’s also been linked to a life-threatening obstruction of lung passages, causing health alerts in factories where workers have been exposed to it. As of this writing, diacetyl is still considered safe by governmental agencies although it has been voluntarily removed by many manufacturers.
Then there’s the depressing problem of chemical additives that have managed to become more real than the real thing itself. Benzaldehyde replicates cherry flavor in candies, drinks, and desserts. But Robitussin is not cherry pie! Or maybe it is. The fake flavoring is now more recognizable to people as cherry than real cherries themselves.4
In fact, artificial flavorings are the big kahuna on the market. Of all the additives available today, almost half are flavoring agents, an incredible 500 percent growth since the fifties. By 1978, 80 percent of packaged and processed foods had some sort of flavor additive—and that was before the go-go eighties, the convenience nineties, or the mass hysteria of the millennial rush-rush.5
And all that is not to mention the emulsifiers (to keep fats and other things from falling out of suspension and forming an oily slick on a product), thickeners (to make things appear creamy when they can’t be), texturizers (to make things feel better in the mouth than they in fact are), and gelling agents. Here’s a sample of some of the most common food additives:
WHAT IT’S CALLED |
WHAT IT IS |
HOW IT’S USED |
Calcium phosphate |
A mineral, the basis of tooth enamel, and one of the major components in bones |
A leavening agent, also used in commercial fertilizers |
Calcium sulfate |
Can be mined from gypsum |
A common coagulant for tofu; when mixed with water, part of the formula for plaster of Paris |
Carrageenan |
A chemical compound extracted from seaweed |
A gelling agent and thickener, keeps foods such as puddings homogenous |
The most common thickening agent in processed foods, often made from the lints attached to cottonseeds |
A texturizer (adds creamy mouthfeel), protein stabilizer, and a moisture retainer that forms an oil-resistant film in a huge range of foods from soups to condiments, from noodles to protein beverages |
|
Dextrin, polydextrine, Maltodextrine |
Processed short-chain starches |
Low-calorie sweeteners and thickening agents |
Dextrose, polydextrose |
Forms of glucose (a.k.a. forms of sugar) |
Low-calorie, lower-glucose sweeteners and thickeners added to salad dressings, low-calorie treats, and candies |
Guar gum |
Derivative of seeds from the guar plant, a legume |
A thickener, often used in fat-free and low-fat products |
Lecithin |
A fatlike substance (a phospholipid), originally derived from egg yolks or milk but now extracted primarily from soy beans |
An emulsifier, particularly able to keep fats in suspension, like the cocoa butter in chocolate |
Locust bean gum |
A processed gum from the endosperm of a leguminous carob tree |
A stabilizer for gels and thickeners. It cannot gel on its own but improves the gel strength of other additives, particularly in the fillings for baked goods and canned pet food |
Methylcellulose |
A gummy substance that does not occur naturally |
The primary component in digestive aids like Citrucel but also used as a thickener, absorbing humidity and water |
Starches (corn, wheat, tapioca, etc.) heavily processed physically, chemically, and/or enzymatically to increase their stability against acids, heat, cold, or time |
Thickeners, flow agents, antidrip agents in frozen foods, binders in low-fat meat products, the glue on postage stamps, and the goo in ultrasound liquids |
|
Mono- and diglycerides |
Modified fats, usually made from soybean, cottonseed, sunflower, or palm oil |
Emulsifiers—both fat-and water-soluble. Thus, they join water and fat in an emulsion, keeping baked goods from getting stale |
Polysorbate 20, 40, 60, 65, and 80 |
Oily liquids made when sorbitol (a sugar alcohol) is estrified with fatty acids |
Texturizers that prevent proteins from coating fat droplets, allowing those proteins to create nets, thus allowing more air to get whipped into things and also providing a firmer texture (as something made with Polysorbate 80 melts, it retains its shape) |
Sodium stearoyl lactylate and calcium stearoyl lactylate |
A complex chemical compound made by combining lactic acid and stearic acid, then reacting the result with sodium hydroxide or calcium hydroxide |
An emulsifier, particularly used in baked goods like tortillas or breads to keep them fresh |
Tetrasodium pyrophosphate |
Colorless, transparent crystals or a white powder |
Stabilizer for acidity levels, binder of proteins to water (to hold together faux-crabmeat and chicken nuggets), and a thickener for instant puddings (also used in toothpaste to control tartar) |
Xanthan gum |
A residue produced when the bacteria are fed corn sugar |
Thickener to give a creaminess to dressings, sauces, and desserts (also used to lubricate pumps) |
What should we take away from all this information? In a world of expiring, shelf-stable, and fake-flavor foods, we ingest copious chemicals, metabolize them, store their residues in our cells, and convince ourselves that we’re eating something real. Only to eat more because we’re not. Which may be the biggest problem of all.
Our brains process information, not nutrition. Regardless of whether our stomachs are getting the satisfaction they expect, if the chemical information in our food says sweet or tasty or flavorful, we chow down because our brains read taste first and foremost, based on memories of pleasure. Faked out, we then don’t listen to what’s going on down in our enteric nervous system.
For example, when we eat full-sugar, high-calorie foods, our brains sense the sweet, and all sorts of biochemical processes lurch into gear, preparing our bodies for lots of calories. Unfortunately, those very same processes come into play when we drink a diet soda. Our brains sense sweet—although fake—yet the real sugar never materializes. So our bodies are left waiting for calories. The artificial stuff has then broken the link between high-calorie foods and satiety. Faked out to expect more, we reach for more. And more.6
We’ve also trained ourselves to recognize the fake as the real. We’ve already seen the chocolate flavor in puddings. But what about fake vanilla, lemon, lime, cherry, watermelon, apple, orange, or banana? And nut flavors are often fake these days—or added to processed goods to enhance the taste of mealy, poor-quality nuts.
We’ve also let our brains fake out our stomachs when it comes to canned beef broth. It should be made with pan drippings—which are ridiculously expensive to produce on a mass scale. Therefore, many canned broths are stocked with monosodium glutamate (MSG), a chemical compound that we’ve now learned to interpret as beef flavor.
We’ve bought a bill of goods about how fake stuff is less fattening, less troublesome, less time-consuming, or just less costly—when in fact it may be worse for us, more costly (in the long run), and to add insult to injury, more fattening.
But aren’t all these additives safe? you might ask.
The short answer is yes.
But it’s complicated.
There have been all sorts of investigative reports about additives—like the story of BHA and BHT. In 2007, the U.S. government ran tests and discovered that these two chemicals, long declared safe, can in fact react with vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or citric acid, added or naturally occurring in fruit and carbonated beverages. In the end, the lethal combo spawns benzene, a known carcinogen.
No one knows how much benzene we’ve imbibed over the years. Beverage manufacturers have since reformulated their products. Still, we have to wonder when the next shoe will fall.7
But let’s be generous and give every additive in our food a bye. If we were resourceful, we could locate each one’s original safety test. And we would find them cleared one by one. So is our short answer still yes?
Unfortunately, no.
Because no one has tested all those additives and preservatives for long-term use. They were given a human trial of forty days, three months, maybe a year, but not ten years, twenty years, thirty years, or more.
Except in us. We’re that test. No one really knows what those chemicals or their broken-down residues do after years and years in our bodies, stored in the cellular structures we call ourselves.
And more tellingly, no one knows what those chemicals do in combination with each other, as with BHA or BHT and citric acid. Sure, a lab isolates an additive, tests it in rats, then humans, and finally releases it to the market. But what about that additive or preservative in combination with all the other chemicals we ingest? The residual antibiotics in our meat? The fertilizers in the animals’ feed? And every drug we take? The statins? The aspirin? The antacids?
What about these little chemical experiments we call our bodies?
Enough with this house of horrors! The only escape is to go back to where we started: chocolate pudding. Nothing’s more real or elemental. So make a batch and savor it. This version has an intense chocolate flavor, not sweet so much as satisfying, and a silky, luxurious texture.
1. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Give your forearm a workout to get the eggs smooth and creamy, without any floating bits of translucent egg white.
2. Put the milk, brown sugar, cocoa powder, flour, chocolate, vanilla, and salt in a large saucepan over medium heat and whisk until the chocolate melts and the mixture just begins to bubble. Cook, whisking while it bubbles lightly for 30 seconds.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk half of this chocolate mixture into the eggs in a slow, steady stream until smooth. Whisk this combined mixture back into the remaining chocolate mixture in the saucepan, then set that pan over very low heat. If you’re using an electric range, it may be helpful to use a second burner, just now turned to low. Whisk constantly over the heat for 2 minutes, reaching into the edges of the pan and letting the pudding come to only the barest bubble. If the pudding starts to bubble, reduce the heat even more or take the pan off the heat and keep whisking for a few seconds to cool it down.
4. Pour into four small ramekins or custard cups. Refrigerate until set, about 1 hour.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
As you savor that chocolate pudding, imagine yourself as someone who relishes real food like this—someone who looks for it, understands why it’s important, and won’t settle for anything less.
What would it mean for your daily life? How would you approach dinner tonight? Would you put down the take-out menus to search for better options? Would you forget about making dinner out of half a box of crackers and some processed cheese spread?
This imaginative act is the framework of your future decisions. Hold it in your mind, a picture of who you can be.
To fulfill your vision, become a better shopper—which means you must become a better reader. All the information you need is on the cans, boxes, and packages. Bruce and I found it on the packages and containers of our chocolate puddings. In fact, all manufacturers are required to label what they make: to list the ingredients and nutritional information, among other things. Read those lists to find the fake-outs—and real food, too.
Take twenty minutes out of your day to make a trip to the grocery store, your glasses in hand if you need them. Don’t shop; instead, stroll the aisles and look at the ingredients on random products. Read the labels on the frozen dinners, the cookies, even the stuff in the meat case. What’s in that package of premarinated ribs? How many of those ingredients do you recognize? How many do you understand?
Be wary of any bursts or call-outs on the label: High in Fiber! Sugar-Free! Fat-Free! These often indicate that either something else is altered (it’s high in fiber but also in sugar) or that a real food has been replaced with a fake substitute. An important source of vitamin C can simply mean the product is doped with sugars of all sorts—or even worse, that any real fruit has been replaced by chemical fake-outs and the C then added back for the health claim.
Yes, you’ll find lots of processed crackers with chemical additives; but there are also others without any binders or emulsifiers. Right next to the processed chicken breasts with the chemical-laced marinades are real chicken breasts. Right next to the juices with artificial sweeteners and thickeners are the ones made from all juice.
You’ll soon notice that one drawback to real food is its price. There are a few ways around this problem:
Products go on sale occasionally. Stock up when you have the chance.
Check out some Latin American, Mexican, or Chinese supermarkets. You’ll be surprised at the low prices, particularly in the meat, dairy, and produce sections.
Search out manufacturers’ websites for coupons.
Not to make light of a very real problem, but the cost might help you value real food all the more.
The best news of all? You’ll need less of better quality foods to feel more satisfied.
Much of the fake stuff has been fabricated to put missing flavors into the chemical concoctions that have been passed off as real food. Since you’ve already become someone on the lookout for subtle flavor overtones, one way to resist the fake is to also relish big, bold flavors.
The best way to do that? Savor herbs and spices that bring lots of flavor to every bite. Use them in your cooking; find small restaurants where they are equally valued. Or go over the top and carry little bottles of dried oregano and chile powder with you!
Here’s a handy chart to get you thinking about possible pairings for future meals:
WITH |
USE |
Chicken |
Tarragon, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, ground cumin, ground fenugreek, ground ginger, paprika, and smoked paprika |
Pork |
Cilantro, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, fennel seeds, celery seeds, caraway seeds, red pepper flakes, grated nutmeg, ground cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, saffron, star anise |
Beef |
Sage, thyme, oregano, parsley, caraway seeds, celery seeds, smoked paprika, grated nutmeg, ground allspice, ground mace, ground cardamom |
Fish |
Anise, basil, lemon zest, oregano, savory, thyme, sage, ginger, fennel seeds, dill, chives |
Leafy green vegetables |
Red pepper flakes, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, grated nutmeg or mace |
Tubers, roots, and hard vegetables |
Mustard seeds, rosemary, oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes |
Quick-cooking vegetables like broccoli or asparagus |
Lemon zest, oregano, thyme, chervil, chives |
Fruits |
Thyme, lemon zest, ground cinnamon, star anise, freshly ground black pepper, crushed pink peppercorns |
One note: relishing herbs and spices isn’t automatic. None is preset in the brain. You have to learn their deep satisfaction by creating more memory tracks associated with pleasure.
Go to your spice rack or pantry, open the bottles of dried spices and herbs, and breathe in deeply. Get those flavors wired into your brain: nutmeg, cinnamon, tarragon, thyme, saffron, chile powder, oregano. Practice this every once in a while, just for a few minutes at a time. It’ll help you become someone who savors and anticipates those very flavors. (And by the way, if a bottle doesn’t smell like much, it’s probably old and needs to be replaced. Dried herbs and spices can go bland after a year or so on the shelf.)
Here’s a fun trip: find the nearest Penzey’s, a spice purveyor with outlets across the country (to locate one, look at www.penzeys.com). At the store, you can sample hundreds of spices and blends. First, smell the simpler spices—like the several types of cinnamon. Then check out some of the bolder blends. Buy a few that you’d like to try. Now that’s a lovely outing!
No more chemical aftertaste! There’s a goal. Try a couple of these recipes. All are heavy on the herbs and spices. Think about the flavors you’ve crafted in your meal. Set the table, pour yourself something to drink, and settle in.
Tabbouleh is traditionally a Middle Eastern salad made with bulgur wheat, mint, and tomatoes; here’s a version Bruce has morphed to a main course with shrimp, feta, and two fresh herbs for more pleasure per bite. This dish is a great make-ahead for lunches or dinners; in fact, the flavors are best if they have a chance to mellow a bit. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator for up to three days.
1. Place the bulgur in a small bowl; stir in 1 cup boiling water. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes, until the water is absorbed and the bulgur is tender.
2. Meanwhile, bring a small saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Add the shrimp and cook for about 2 minutes, just until pink and firm. Drain in a colander set in the sink, cool for a few minutes, then roughly chop the shrimp and place them in a medium serving bowl. If you want to avoid this step, look for precooked cocktail shrimp at the fish counter of your supermarket (you’ll still need to chop them).
3. Fluff the bulgur with a fork, then add it to the shrimp.
4. Stir in the cucumber, red onion, sun-dried tomatoes, feta, parsley, lemon juice, dill, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Note: In quick-cooking bulgur wheat, the kernels have been cleaned, parboiled, dried, and partially ground. Parboiling slightly reduces the fiber without reducing most of the nutrients.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
Veggie burgers are a go-to meal in our house: real food without much hassle. This version tastes like minestrone soup with some simple herbs and spices for good flavor. Serve the patties in whole wheat pita pockets with sliced tomatoes, crisp lettuce, and deli mustard. Or eat them on their own with a lightly dressed salad on the side. Or how about alongside Chilled Peach Soup (see pages 12–13)? The patties also make great leftovers—put a little olive oil in a skillet, set it over medium heat, and crisp the patties again, about two minutes per side.
1. Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Add the green beans and cook for 1 minute. Drain in a colander set in the sink, then rinse with cool water until you can handle them. Chop into very small pieces, then set aside. If you want to avoid this whole step, chop thawed, frozen green beans without cooking them.
2. Heat 1 teaspoon of oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until somewhat soft, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for a few seconds, then pour the contents of the skillet into a food processor fitted with the chopping blade.
3. Add the egg white, beans, oats, oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, and salt. Process until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
4. Scrape the mixture into a large bowl; stir in the green beans and sun-dried tomatoes.
5. Heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil in that large skillet over medium heat. Scoop up ½ cup of the mixture and form it into a patty. It will be sticky, so make a loose, slightly irregular patty. If you wet your hands before digging into it, the whole operation goes better. Set that patty in the skillet and continue making more, as many as will fit comfortably. Cook for 4 minutes, then flip and continue cooking for 4 more minutes, until brown and crisp. If you can’t fit them all in the skillet, you’ll need to add 2 more teaspoons of oil for the second batch.
Note: Look for pliable, soft sun-dried tomatoes, not those soaked in oil but instead the dry ones that are among the other produce at your supermarket. If they’re particularly hard and unyielding, pour boiling water over them in a small bowl and soak for 10 minutes before draining and chopping.
MAKES 6 PATTIES
This herbed-up, no-cook sauce is modeled on tzatziki, a traditional Greek preparation. Want to make this dish for a dinner party some weekend? Double the amounts, using a 2½- to 3-pound salmon fillet.
1. Bring the wine or vermouth, water, shallot, bay leaves, and cloves to a simmer in a high-sided skillet or sauté pan large enough to hold the piece of salmon.
2. Ease the fillet into the skillet or pan. Bring the liquid back to a simmer; then cover, reduce the heat to very low, and simmer slowly for 2 minutes. Turn off the heat and set the covered pan aside on another, cool burner for 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, peel the cucumber, then cut it in half lengthwise. Use a small spoon to scrape out and discard the seeds. Slice each of the halves lengthwise into thin strips, then slice these crosswise into a thin dice.
4. Mix the cucumber pieces, yogurt, lemon juice, dill, honey, dry mustard, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl.
5. After the salmon has steeped for 15 minutes, gently transfer the fillet to a cutting board. You’ll need two flat spatulas and some deft coordination. Discard the liquid and all the aromatics. Slice the salmon crossways (not lengthwise) into four servings. Transfer these to serving plates and spoon the yogurt sauce over them.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
Now things get a little more complicated. Some spice mixtures come preprepared, such as garam masala, which means warm spice—in other words, not fiery but comforting. There are hundreds of various blends available from gourmet supermarkets, East Indian supermarkets, or online suppliers. To serve this classic casserole, either scoop it onto plates with a big spoon or take the more traditional approach: turn the baking dish upside down onto a large serving platter, dumping out the casserole to be scooped up by those at the table. Serve it with some jarred chutney (see page 228), minced chives, and/or chopped cilantro leaves for garnishes.
1. Mix the rice and water in a medium pot; bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to very low, and simmer slowly until the rice is tender, 30 to 40 minutes. Set the pot aside, off the heat, while you prepare the casserole.
2. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F.
3. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the sesame oil, then add the onion, tomato, garlic, and ginger. Cook until the onion has begun to soften and the tomatoes to break down, about 5 minutes, stirring once in a while.
4. Stir in the vegetables, garam masala, cinnamon, and salt. Stir over the heat until quite aromatic, about 2 minutes.
5. Stir in the yogurt and lemon juice. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer slowly until the vegetables have begun to break down, about 20 minutes, stirring once in a while.
6. Stir in the nuts and raisins and set the pot aside, off the heat.
7. Spread half the rice in the bottom of a 9-inch square baking dish. Pour all the vegetable mixture on top; spread it evenly to the corners. Top the dish with the remaining rice, again spreading it evenly across the baking dish.
8. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 15 minutes. Let stand at room temperature, covered, for 5 minutes. If desired, preheat the broiler and place the rack about 6 inches from the heat source. Brush the melted butter over the casserole, then set it under the broiler just until the rice begins to get a little crisp. Set the casserole aside at room temperature for 5 minutes before turning the whole thing upside down onto a large serving platter.
Note: If you want to take your spice knowledge to higher levels, consider making your own garam masala. In any quantities, mix together 1 part ground allspice, 1 part cayenne, 2 parts fennel seeds, 4 parts mild paprika, 4 parts ground cumin, 4 parts ground cardamom, and 8 parts ground coriander. For example, use ½ teaspoon as 1 part—then take it from there. You’ll make more than you need, but you can store the mixture in the spice cabinet for up to 9 months, using it on scrambled eggs, in mac-and-cheese, or as a garnish on steamed or roasted vegetables.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
(CAN BE DOUBLED IF PUT INTO A 9 X 13-INCH BAKING DISH)
A tagine is a long-stewed Moroccan casserole, a spice extravaganza. It’s usually made in a specialty pot, but Bruce’s version is simpified for the equiptment most of us have. His version is also quicker and fresher, thanks to the bright spike of dried California apricots, which are orange and tart. (Dried Turkish apricots tend to be milder in flavor and have less juice per bite.) Consider this an advanced recipe in your quest for more flavor through herbs and spices.
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Heat the oil in a large flame-safe casserole or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion; cook, stirring often, until softened, about 4 minutes.
2. Add the garlic and ginger; cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
3. Add the chicken; cook, stirring often, until lightly browned, about 4 minutes.
4. Stir in the cinnamon, coriander, cumin, salt, pepper, and cloves; cook until aromatic, about 20 seconds.
5. Pour in the broth; scrape up any browned bits on the pan’s bottom. Stir in the chickpeas, dried apricots, and honey. Bring to a simmer; then cover, place in the oven, and bake for 45 minutes.
6. Sprinkle the artichoke bits over the casserole without stirring them in. Cover and continue baking until bubbling and thick, about 15 more minutes. Set aside, covered, at room temperature for 10 minutes before stirring and serving.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
Once Bruce and I decided to forget fake food and make real food our goal, we made this quick inventory of our fridge:
On the top shelf: containers of milk and yogurt in various fat percents, as well as a couple sticks of butter and a carton of eggs.
On the main shelves, the vast bulk of the food: some leftover pasta salad from recipe-testing for a magazine article, a doggy bag with pieces of roast chicken from a restaurant, bits of a pork roast and vegetables from a dinner party, plus containers of dips, plastic-wrapped bits of cheese, deli meats, and a box of crackers. (How did those get in there?)
On the door shelves: sun-dried tomatoes and stuffed grape leaves from the supermarket’s salad bar, as well as jars or bottles of jam, mustard, salad dressing, oil, hot fudge sauce, barbecue sauce, salsa, hot sauce, and mayonnaise.
In the hydrators: chicken thighs and beef bottom round for recipe-testing, a few navel oranges, a pear and some celery ribs that had seen better days, two heads of cauliflower (two?), and a bag of onions.
Scattered all around, the snacks: applesauce, peanut butter, raspberries from a local farm, and the remnants of a strawberry-rhubarb crisp from that same dinner party. Plus, a half-eaten candy bar. (Don’t even ask.)
And that’s not counting what was in the freezer. (Butter-pecan ice cream, anyone?) With so much on hand, how could we know what was real food? Those condiments? The yogurt? That half-eaten candy bar? How could we choose?
In truth, what was in our refrigerator did not fall into neat categories of real and fake food. It was far more complicated. We needed a forgiving and flexible system for reference.
Here’s what we finally came to: there’s the best of all possible foods, some great substitutes, some barely acceptable ones, and a host of things that aren’t real food in any sense of the word. Therefore, our system goes like this:
Let’s take the boxes one by one.
This category includes fruits, vegetables, beans, berries, meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, whole grains, spices, herbs, nut oils, olive oil, milk, cream, and even butter. The majority of the things in this box are basic ingredients from the grocery store—or solid preparations (like those recipes for tabbouleh or biryani) that emphasize the satisfying, natural, fresh taste of their real ingredients.
In our homemade chocolate pudding, for example, most of the ingredients were as close to their natural state as possible.8 We made a chocolate pudding that actually included chocolate and that actually tasted like chocolate. “An adult pudding,” one of our recipe testers called it.
So real food is not only the elemental ingredients; it also offers a full range of fats, sugars, fiber, and protein. In fact, real food leads to greater pleasure and satiety precisely because it encompasses this range. Real food is steak and potatoes, bread and chocolate.
Take broccoli, that most dreaded of all vegetables. Forget a boiled mess of flabby green. How about broccoli stir-fried in sesame oil with chiles and scallions for a tongue-spanking pop? Or cooked in a skillet with walnut oil and sliced onions for a beat-back-winter freshness? Or roasted with olive oil, grated lemon zest, and whole garlic cloves so the natural sugars mingle and caramelize?
That all said, it’s still real food if the prep work has been done for you—for example, prechopped butternut squash from the supermarket’s produce section or cut-up vegetables for a stir-fry. Even the salmon burgers at the supermarket can be real food, although they’re premade and preformed. The time you spend preparing something is no indicator of whether it counts as real food. Convenience should never be discounted, just examined.
In the end, real foods retain their nutritional goodness and flavors by using honest, real ingredients without resorting to chemicals and fakes.
However, some processing retains and even enhances a food’s natural character. Boiling down maple sap to make maple syrup? Perfectly acceptable. Drying herbs to make bottled spices? Terrific. Crushing olives into oil or milling grains into flours? Fully real food. Churning cream into butter? Who could live without it?
Or take chocolate. Few of us would eat a cacao bean off the tree. To turn the beans into chocolate, they’re dried, fermented, ground, then mixed with sugars and more cocoa fat. But no one would doubt that chocolate is real food because (1) all that processing creates a product amazingly in line with the pods off the tree, and (2) nothing chemical has to be added to the cocoa beans along the way.
In like manner, coffee and tea are real foods because even if you got the beans or leaves home, you’d have to complete the same process as manufacturers to turn them into something you can drink.
However, if the processing removes essential flavors, chances are the product is no longer real food. For example, refining often takes away most of a vegetable oil’s taste, robbing us of what we need in order to know we’re full. Rather than a tasteless oil, how about a full-flavored walnut or avocado oil?
Here’s another example. Cocoa butter is often chemically deodorized to make white chocolate, robbing it of any cocoa taste. Even worse are versions of so-called white chocolate that are no more than hydrogenated shortening with fake flavorings. Better then to find a true white chocolate, with the trace flavors of the darker cocoa still in place.
If the processing transforms something good into something bad for you—like vegetable fats that get hydrogenated into solid shortenings (more on this in “Step 4”)—it’s not real food anymore.
Or if the processing robs the food of a high percentage of its nutritional value, it’s probably not real food.
But real food is not necessarily raw. Real food can be cooked to retain its natural goodness. And it’s not simply old-fashioned. There was a food-lover’s rule a while back that basically said you should eat things only your grandparents or great-grandparents would recognize as food. Unfortunately, that’s too simplistic. After all, shrimp was bait until the late-nineteenth century.
Remember that real food is about getting back to two important standards: taste and health.
Of course, not all foods can fall into the first box on the left of our chart. So we have two categories just to the right of the ideal: almost real food and barely real food. As we go along, we’ll fill in these boxes with foods and products based on the amount of processing, added fat or sugar, chemicals, or a few other dietary concerns.
For example, while a fresh peach remains our goal, we don’t live in a perfect world. Deep in December, we can only get the little hard golf balls from Chile. We might then put those in that box to the right, almost real food, something we have to use because there are few other choices at that time of year.
Or we might even put frozen sliced peaches in that category. No, they’re not good for eating on their own, but they can be used in our Chilled Peach Soup (see pages 12–13) to good effect.
Think back to those pears we tried from the can. The ones doped with too much sugar would fall one box farther over, into barely real food. As long as they’re not laced with artificial junk, they’re still within the realm of the real; but they’re really not a good choice, given their slimy, overly sweet taste.
In fact, many canned products would end up in one of these two categories. Remember: we’ve got two key criteria—taste and health. So canned beans—just like high-quality, organic canned broth and jarred artichoke hearts or roasted red peppers packed in water—would fall into the almost real food box because (1) they retain a good portion of their fiber and nutrients, and (2) they taste pretty good, close to the real food you would make yourself. Besides, canned beans are a terrific time-saver. So a soup made with them would be almost real food—and definitely good enough to make the cut.
That said, canned bean soup may contain too many preservatives and chemicals. It then would fall farther to the right on our chart and into the danger zone. Which is…
These are foods and ingredients doped with additives, laced with artificial flavors, and/or thickened chemically. They include a host of packaged, processed, and convenience products.
And horrifyingly, they include most of the fruit we eat—because we don’t eat real fruit anymore! By 1998, 56 percent of all fruit consumed in the United States was processed into spreads, doughnut fillings, pie fillings, and other convenience products.9 Whatever happened to just eating a piece of fruit?
Many frozen peach pies would also end up in this last box because of the sheer size of their chemical signature. However, some would escape, becoming barely real food. And a homemade peach pie, made with sliced fresh peaches and a buttery crust would certainly fall in almost real food, if not real food altogether, depending on the ingredients used.
Fat-free half-and-half is not real food. How do you know? Read the label: thickeners aplenty and corn syrup sweeteners. Here’s the listed ingredients on one brand: Nonfat Milk, Corn Syrup, Cream, Artificial Color, Sodium Citrate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Mono- & Diglycerides, Carrageenan, Vitamin A Palmitate. Something consummately real has been turned into fake food in short order—although there is somehow cream in the fat-free version. Talk about bizarre! Here’s something that is itself and isn’t.
Okay, so let’s begin to build a full chart. Why not just enjoy real half-and-half? In moderation, of course.
Hold this chart in your mind. Make your own version, if you want. Put it in your briefcase or purse. As you go about your day, think about what’s real and what’s not, what’s almost real food and what’s barely so, what’s been shellacked with additives, what’s wonderful in its natural state.
Canned mandarin oranges once ruled grocery store shelves—mostly because nobody could find a fresh one. Originally from Asia, it’s a small orange, perfumed like a tangerine, but a little sweeter and without the vanilla overtones.
These days, many of us can buy fresh mandarins in the late winter. However, canned versions remain the dominant way we experience this fruit: tossed into the Asian salads at many chain restaurants, added to stir-fries in some Chinese restaurants, or even suspended in our great aunt’s Jell-O salad.
As an experiment, Bruce and I set out to discover how various versions of a mandarin orange would fit into our real food chart. We used:
a fresh mandarin orange
no-sugar-added canned mandarin orange sections packed in water
canned mandarin orange sections packed in juice (in pear juice, to be exact)
canned mandarin orange sections packed in light syrup
The fresh mandarin orange scored as real food, no problem; so we set it in that category without any qualms.
Then things got trickier. When we sat down to examine our options, we believed the orange sections packed in light syrup would merit our greatest scorn. How could these be real food with that overly sweet, sticky shellac?
And let’s not kid ourselves: they were sweet, overwhelmingly so, almost enough to mask the natural flavors.
But here’s where it got complicated: we were equally shocked at the sections packed in water. They, too, were very sweet, unexpectedly so. In fact, they tasted sweeter than those packed in the light syrup. What was up?
The label blared no sugar added. A good sign, we thought. Then we noted a little symbol at the bottom of the can. A footnote, as it were. We put on our reading glasses.
Although there was no sugar added, there was Splenda. And when we read the ingredients on the back, we discovered that these mandarin sections were doped three times over with chemical sweeteners: with sorbitol, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose. What appeared to be a healthful choice was actually laced with fake stuff. How did we know? By reading the can’s federally mandated ingredient list on the back, not by paying attention to the labeling tricks on the front.
While we’re on the subject, what were the ingredients in our canned selections? Here they are, exactly as listed on the labels:
no-sugar-added canned mandarin orange sections packed in water: mandarin oranges, water, sorbitol, citric acid, artificial sweeteners (acesulfame potassium, sucralose), cellulose gum
canned mandarin orange sections packed in juice: mandarin orange segments, pear juice
canned mandarin orange sections packed in light syrup: mandarin orange segments, water, sugar, citric acid
Two of our selections included citric acid—which has two purposes in modern processed foods. It’s a preservative and it also gives a sour pop. The white powdery stuff on sour candies is often citric acid. It’s probably added here to keep the orange sections in good shape and also give back a little of the sour spark they’ve lost in processing.
Then there’s that cellulose gum (see page 39), added to make the sections slipperier, a little chewier. Perhaps the water-packed segments are trying to mimic the ones packed in syrup, a little slick chewiness in each bite?
In the end, the sections packed in light syrup had fewer fake-out chemicals than the no sugar added ones. So gathering all our information, here’s our chart:
Do you need to do this sort of over-the-top investigation at every step? Of course not. But open your eyes to the possibilities and the limits of your choices.
Left to our own assumptions, Bruce and I would have put the canned oranges in light syrup down at the bottom as not real food. But by reading labels and ingredient lists, we were able to better see how our choices fell out—and make better ones at that.
A significant number of processed products have been born out of convenience, to mimic what we can make at home. Are they all bad? By no means! Just as we did with our mandarin oranges, we have to do a little investigating.
In other words, we have to take our glasses to the supermarket. Or put another way, we have to treat a supermarket like a bookstore, as if it were stocked with things to read (as well as to eat). Will doing so slow us down? Yes, a bit. But the payoff will be beyond compare: we will become the kind of people who accept nothing less than the best. We don’t just seek convenience (although we don’t discount it either); we instead seek satisfaction at all times.
Two of the most common convenience products are pasta sauces and salad dressings. How do these things fit into our chart?
We could make the same categorizations with soup (from homemade to various canned versions), whipped cream (from the canned stuff that’s just real cream with a propellant, to the chocolate versions with fake flavors, to the all-fake stuff), and even bread (from crunchy baguettes made only with flour, water, yeast, and salt, to gummy, presliced breads stocked with sweeteners and preservatives, an enormous chemical signature).
Although the first category, real food, is what we strive for, we cannot achieve it at every turn. Life needs more forgiveness. Therefore, the two categories to its right, almost real food and barely real food, are ways to get close enough, especially at the beginning of this journey. By the end, we hope to choose only items in the first two categories. For now, keep this in mind: whatever you’ve been doing, however you’ve been buying food, strive to move your choices one category to the left. If you find that most of what you’ve got or buy is barely real food, then make it your goal to start shopping for things that would fall into the almost real food category—better pasta, better salad dressings.
And speaking of those, here are some real food versions to get you started:
This sauce is best when tomatoes are at their peak in midsummer. It can be saved in the fridge for a day or two but let it come back to room temperature before tossing it with still-warm whole wheat spaghetti.
1. Whisk the oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.
2. Cut the tomatoes into several sections, then hold these over the sink or a trash can and scoop out the seeds and their membranes with a small spoon or your finger.
3. Finely chop the seeded tomatoes. Stir them and the basil into the olive oil dressing.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
This may be the most versatile pasta sauce, a simple taste that beats any jarred version. Serve it over just about any pasta shape you choose—so long as you also give it a good sprinkle of real finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top.
1. Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. Pour in the oil, add the onion, and cook until soft, about 3 minutes, stirring frequently.
2. Add the garlic, oregano, and thyme; cook just until you can smell the herbs, about 10 seconds.
3. Pour in the tomatoes, stir in the bay leaf and nutmeg, then bring to a simmer.
4. Reduce the heat to low, simmer uncovered until somewhat thickened, not soupy at all, about 25 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Remove and discard the bay leaf before serving.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
Leave behind the majority of bottled salad dressings; most are full of fake flavorings and tasteless fats. This one’s a version of that sweet and savory dressing served over the salad at many Japanese restaurants. Try it over any shredded radishes, carrots, celery root, or zucchini (or a mixture of any two). Or just put it on some chopped Romaine lettuce for an easy side salad.
Whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl until smooth. The dressing can be saved in the fridge for up to 3 days, whisking it again to thin it out before using.
MAKES SIX 2-TABLESPOON SERVINGS
This dressing is best on a composed salad: some chopped lettuce, a sliced peach or plum, a few chopped nuts or crumbled goat cheese, some radish sprouts, and precooked cocktail shrimp.
Whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl. The dressing can be made ahead of time and kept at room temperature for up to 6 hours—or in the fridge for up to 3 days.
MAKES SIX 2-TABLESPOON SERVINGS
One weekend, Bruce and I went to our friends’ house for dinner. The adults had a lovely meal: roast turkey, steamed butternut squash, broccoli. Even an apple pie for dessert. But the kids had none of it. They had fish sticks, scraped off a baking sheet, plopped down in a pile of ketchup.
We’re not unsympathetic. Our friends work demanding jobs. They had company to entertain and were just trying to keep the peace. But on the way home, Bruce and I thought about those ever-present fish sticks, a go-to meal for kids (and adults, too). Where do they fall in our chart?
Without a doubt, the fish stick arises from the healthiest way to fry fish, a technique called oven-frying: fish fillets are lightly coated and set on a baking sheet in a hot oven until crunchy. No excess oil, no overly fatty coating—if you make it yourself. However, the pre-breaded ones in the supermarket’s freezer section have a high-fat coating, made with all sorts of tasteless binders and preservatives. Plus, the fish is processed, chopped, and probably extruded, sort of like fish mush.
Bruce and I did posit that there was probably an alternative: organic, low-processed fish fillets at high-end supermarkets. We hadn’t seen them but thought they must exist. We figured our chart would look like this:
It seemed straightforward. But my hunch was that few people would ever bother to make their own oven-fried fish fillets. I did a random sampling among our friends. “If you know oven-fried fish fillets are better for you and more satisfying,” I asked them, “why do you ever make the frozen, packaged stuff?”
Time and again, I ran into two answers: cost and time.
I bought the answers at face value, so much so that one day I brought up my little survey with a food-writer friend and ended up in a rather heated argument. I argued that real food was more costly than the fake—and that not everyone could make the choice for real food so easily.
He scoffed at me. “You’ve just bought the marketing gimmicks of the processed-food makers.”
I was duly outraged. But it turns out, I had.
Bruce set up a taste test between our own version of oven-fried fish and a store-brand competitor of frozen, breaded fish fillets. Here’s what we thought we’d discover: that the store-bought fillets were cheaper and quicker, but ours tasted better. (Hey, no point in hiding our prejudices.)
So he upped the ante. He added a premium version of those breaded fillets to give ours a run for their money, those great substitutes we’d theorized existed. He drove to a high-end supermarket to find sustainable, line-caught, whole wheat–breaded frozen fish. Unfortunately, they had no fillets, but they did have some premium fish sticks made from sliced, whole cod fillets.
He also bought the fresh fish fillets from that same market. The haddock looked particularly fresh, but frankly just about any thin, white-fleshed fish fillet would have worked.
He got it all home and set to cooking. We timed the preparation and figured out the cost and calories. Based on the serving sizes on the packaging, here are our results:
Not only were our fillets lower in calories than the other two, they were also cheaper. Admittedly, ours weren’t as quick. They took four minutes longer than the Stop & Shop fillets and nine minutes more than the Natural Sea sticks. But it wasn’t that far off.11 (And the sticks were individually smaller, so the shorter baking time was a function of their size.)
We were befuddled. The cost of our homemade version was less than the convenience product’s. The calorie count was better. And the time-for-cooking was certainly in the ballpark. (In fact, as we go through this journey, we can prove this same conclusion again and again with hamburgers, cole slaw, steaks, and chicken breasts.)
So what was stopping everyone from making their own oven-fried fish fillets?
I called our friends with the kids. “What’s the deal with those fish sticks?” I asked. “You guys are great cooks. Can’t you make your own?”
After I debunked cost and time, they came back with one answer: “Effort.”
Effort: a rather hard-to-pin-down variable that expresses how much energy it takes to do something. After months of working on the recipes in this book, of sending them out to our recipe-testers and asking them to conduct similar experiments, Bruce and I have come to one conclusion: when people say they don’t have the time to make real food, they really mean they don’t want to spend the effort.
Which is sort of crazy, given that it’s food we’re putting in our bodies. Who doesn’t want better fried fish?
Here’s Bruce’s version from our test case. Try this recipe once and you’ll never go back to buying frozen. Just keep this rule in mind when you’re buying fresh fish: it should smell fresh, like the ocean on a spring morning at high tide, not like the tidal flats in August.
1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400°F.
2. Mix the egg whites and lemon juice with a whisk or a fork in a shallow soup bowl until foamy and well combined.
3. Mix the cornmeal, whole wheat flour, salt, paprika, dill, and pepper in a second shallow soup bowl or on a dinner plate.
4. Drizzle the oil on a large baking sheet, then use a wadded-up paper towel to smear it around.
5. Take one of the fish fillets and dip it in the egg white mixture, coating both sides. Let some of the excess run off, then dip the piece in the cornmeal mixture on both sides. Then do all this again with the same piece of fish: back into the egg white mixture and then back into the cornmeal mixture. Place the fillet on the prepared baking sheet and repeat with the other fillets.
6. Bake for 9 minutes, then use a big spatula to flip the fillets and continue baking for 9 more minutes. Transfer each fillet to a dinner plate and serve while hot.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
Heaven knows, Bruce and I are often so tired we can barely move by 6:00 p.m. And dinner is an easier thing for us because chances are, Bruce has been cooking all day. We can just pick at the leftovers.
And herein lies the hypocrisy of many a food writer: the hectoring blather of why don’t you just get a nice dinner on the table? Easily said and done when you cook for a living.
However, that irritating duplicity doesn’t mitigate this basic truth: the amount of effort we put into making real food will pay off in better health, better weight maintenance, and better all-around contentment. In a recent shocker, a USDA-backed study showed that people of normal weight spend more time shopping for and cooking food than do people who are overweight.12
So effort is never to be discounted. That said, there are a few ways to put it in without the task’s getting out of hand:
1. Plan ahead.
Make a shopping list; decide what you’re going to have for dinner tomorrow night today. We know so many people who say, “But I don’t know what I’ll want to eat tomorrow.” Listen, is this the last meal you’ll eat? If not, then it’s fine to make a plan and stick to it, even if you find yourself not in the mood for fish on an average Wednesday night. Besides, as you prepare the fish, you’ll get in the mood for it, the mere sight of the fresh food instigating hunger the way it should.
2. Avoid the lines.
Explore Fresh Direct, Peapod, and other services that do the shopping for you. No, you won’t be able to pick out the cabbage of your choice. But a little compromise is well worth it in the face of crazy schedules.
3. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Maybe this week you can make only two or three dinners at home. Great! Set that as your goal. Be realistic but also push the boundaries a bit.
And as you’re thinking about how you can put in a little more effort for a big result, always focus on real food—as well as the goal of a healthier, thinner, more content you.
Effort makes food an accomplishment, not just a necessity—and that allows for even greater satisfaction. In fact, cooking food ourselves can give rise to the most pleasurable state of effort imaginable: flow.
Long studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University, flow is a psychological state we all experience from time to time: that moment when the challenge before us and our skills to meet it are wonderfully balanced. Time evaporates; we forget the daily worries; our attention focuses like a beam.
It can happen when we’re playing the piano, when we’re practicing yoga, or when we’re deeply engaged in a conversation. It’s the sweet balance of effort and reward.13
I watched Bruce become immersed in flow the other day. He was developing a recipe for Mapo Dofu, a Chinese braise of pork, hot chiles, tofu, and tomatoes—a classic dish, but this time a little less heavy. He was trying to figure out the right blend of spices, bending over the bottles in his spice drawer, smelling combinations in the palm of his hand. (You’ll find the results of his testing later in this book.)
I came in to ask him a question about the exact deadline for an article and he barely registered my presence. “Soon,” he said—as if that meant something.
I didn’t press it. He was having the time of his life: creative, in a state of flow.
Cooking itself can be enjoyable, a way to experience life fully and to be creative for a real reward. It can lead to flow.
On the way home from work, anticipate the pleasure of cooking dinner. It’s a way to step away from the hassles, do something for yourself, and be creative without anyone looking over your shoulder.
Think about pouring that glass of wine and getting out the onion to chop. Imagine that wonderful sizzle when it hits the oil or butter. Then get home, take the phone off the hook—that means the BlackBerry, too—and start fulfilling that dream.
For more ways to find flow in cooking, try these:
Put on some good music. I’m all Bach; Bruce is Sondheim. To each his own.
Get the lights right. Sounds silly, but we noticed a big difference in how long we stayed in the kitchen when we did no more than put a dimmer switch on the wall for the overhead lights. There’s no more glare, now a softer glow.
Get in some comfortable clothes. Neither of us will cook in a tie. Some evils are unspeakable.
Make the space comfortable, too. Who can work on counters loaded with jars, bottles, and other culinary what-nots? Give yourself a nice work surface.
Have someone else around. If I’m not cooking, I’m still in the kitchen with Bruce. I sit on the floor with the dog lying against my legs. We chat, we sing, we rehearse life’s foibles. It’s what makes a home, every minute of it.
As Bruce and I began to come to terms with the real food chart, we went back into the kitchen, this time to do some housecleaning—or fridge-cleaning, as the case might be. We consulted the chart, read labels, and chucked stuff out. Like these:
Light Mayonnaise (listed ingredients on the bottle: water, soybean oil, vinegar, modified cornstarch, whole eggs and egg yolks, sugar, salt, xanthan gum, lemon and lime peel fibers, sorbic acid, calcium disodium EDTA [used to protect quality], lemon juice concentrate, phosphoric acid, DL alpha tocopheryl acetate [vitamin E], natural flavors, beta carotene)
That pear and those celery stalks that had seen better days
That half a candy bar
But we didn’t throw out everything. The crackers were Finn Crisp Hi-Fibre Wholegrain Crispbread with Rye Flour. They were a little soggy from being in the refrigerator’s chill (I still don’t know who put them in there), but we could crisp them up on a baking sheet in a 300°F oven for a few minutes. Plus, we looked at their stated ingredients: whole-grain rye flour, rye bran, water, yeast, and salt. Yes, the flour is refined, but it’s a whole-grain product and so certainly doesn’t fall into the not real food category (nor even the barely real food category—but that’s a story for “Step 6”).
Other things we kept included the following:
Marque Guyanese Pride Brand Guyana Hot Crushed Pepper Sauce (listed ingredients on the bottle: peppers, vinegar, spices, salt)
Pickapepper Sauce (listed ingredients on the bottle: tomatoes, onions, sugar, cane vinegar, mangoes, raisins, garlic, salt, peppers, thyme, and cloves)
Bon Maman Apricot Preserves (listed ingredients on the bottle: apricots, cane sugar, fruit pectin, citric acid—pectin is a naturally occurring thickener, what your grandmother would have used to make apricot preserves)
The fat-free milk and the low-fat yogurt (despite appearing “diet-y,” neither had anything fake in the mix)
Bruce and I encourage you to do the same. Look through your refrigerator and pantry, then toss out some of the things you don’t deem as real food, using the chart in this book and the parameters we’ve established.
There’s no reason to be wasteful. Remember there are two nuanced categories: almost real food and barely real food. The benefit of the doubt is not the worst thing at this moment. The worst thing is not finding satisfaction in our food—which makes us eat more and more to compensate.
But a step in the right direction is worth a thousand words. So off to the fridge and pantry with you! And once you get it cleaned out, you’ll know what you have on hand to help you make a shopping list for a couple of these meals that’ll keep it real at the table.
This salad is a meal in every bite: bacon, egg, the works. That poached egg will slowly melt into the dressing, a rich treat guaranteed to slow things down for dinner.
1. Place the torn frisée in a large bowl. Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of water to a simmer.
2. Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon; cook, stirring occasionally, until frizzled and browned.
3. Stir in the shallots. Cook, stirring often, until softened.
4. Whisk—don’t stir—in the mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Then remove the skillet from the heat and whisk in the vinegar. Pour this mixture over the frisée and toss well. Divide the dressed frisée between two plates.
5. Reduce the heat under the water so that it simmers slowly. Crack an egg into a small cup, then gently pour it into the water. Do the same with the second egg on the other side of the saucepan. Turn off the heat and cover the saucepan for 4 minutes.
6. Remove the eggs from the warm water with a slotted spoon, letting the water drain so as not to turn the salad soggy. Set an egg on each salad. Give each a few generous grinds of pepper.
MAKES 2 SERVINGS
(CAN BE DOUBLED FOR A FAMILY MEAL)
Buy real ricotta: no stretchers, thickeners, or preservatives. It’ll make the best patties: fresh, flavorful, and definitely real. Serve these with a little mustard on the side, as well as a light salad, dressed with one of our two new salad dressings (see page 68).
1. Trim the ends off the zucchini, then shred them into a colander, using the large holes of a box grater. (You’ll need about 4 cups of shredded zucchini.)
2. Sprinkle the shredded zucchini with salt, toss well, and set it in the sink for 15 minutes to drain.
3. Rinse the zucchini shreds under cool water in the colander. Then pick up in handfuls and squeeze them over the sink to get rid of almost all of the moisture. It’ll take some time—but your forearm probably needed a good workout anyway. Squeeze out all the moisture you can, then set the shreds in a large bowl.
4. Grate the onion into the bowl using the large holes of the box grater. (If you want to avoid onion tears, you can grate the onion using the shredding blade in a food processor.)
5. Stir in the ricotta, whole wheat flour, beaten egg, paprika, dill, and pepper, just until the mixture is uniform and there are no streaks of dry flour anywhere.
6. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Swirl in the oil, then use a ½-cup measuring cup to scoop up the zucchini mixture and plop it into the skillet, scraping out any mixture left in the cup. Flatten the mixture into a thick cake with the bottom of the cup and continue making more.
7. Cook until lightly browned, about 4 minutes, then turn the patties with a large spatula and continue cooking until lightly browned on the other side and a little firm to the touch, about 4 more minutes. If you can’t fit all six into your skillet, you’ll need a little more oil for the second batch.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
We’ve already talked about eating with all our senses. This recipe will get your hands involved! Eat the shrimp by slurping the sauce off the shells, then peel them before enjoying. Have a lot of napkins handy! Take your time, enjoy every bite, then finish the meal with a bracing, slightly acidic salad of sliced tomatoes, pitted and sliced nectarines, a little minced red onion, and a drizzle of thick, syrupy balsamic vinegar.
1. Melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat.
2. Add the shallots and garlic; cook slowly, stirring often, until the shallots have softened and start to turn golden, about 3 minutes.
3. Stir in the thyme, salt, and pepper; then raise the heat to medium.
4. Add the shrimp. Toss and stir over the heat until they start to turn pink, about 3 minutes.
5. Pour in the wine, vermouth, or broth. Bring to a full simmer, scraping up any browned bits. Simmer until the liquid in the skillet has reduced to about half its original volume.
6. Pour in the cream, stir well, and bring back to a simmer. Cook, stirring often, until the cream has reduced to a thick sauce, less than 1 minute.
Note: Much of the large shrimp (frozen or thawed) sold in supermarkets are already deveined. The package will most likely be so labeled; the shells across the arched back will most certainly be split. To devein a shrimp, follow the steps on pages 19–20, but this time you’ll need a pair of kitchen shears to cut through the shell and down into the flesh, starting at the thick end and moving toward the feathery tail.
