Health

If you haven't done so yet, you should watch Jamie Oliver's TED talk about fighting obesity. I've never really been a Jamie Oliver fan... and, yes, this video is almost a half hour long, but the topic merits your attention. Really.

When you're done, head over to the TED Prize site and join in the effort to help the world eat better.

Michael Pollan The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

He's there to promote his new book - Food Rules: An Eater's Manual ($5.50 on Amazon)- but the focus of the discussion is on parallels between the processed food industry and the smoking industry... and the symbiotic relationship between the food industry and health care.

When I have a guest over for a meal, I always try to ask them whether they have any dietary restrictions or preferences. Oftentimes, they say that they don't. When they do admit to a restriction, they usually apologize for being difficult.

It is far from difficult, though... and the apology is unnecessary. For me, it makes cooking more interesting. Yes, trying to come up with, say, a vegetarian, gluten-free meal that doesn't include any alliums can be challenging. There are two ways to meet a challenge, though: you can shy away from it in fear, or you can embrace it. I can't say that I always do the latter, but when it comes to the kitchen I have a pretty good track record.

On occasion, I hear chefs complain about people who make special requests. The assumption is that the chef is the expert. While I am not going to doubt the general expertise of most chefs, there is a difference between general expertise and an application of that expertise in an individual case. In short, I think that individuals should be assumed to be the best judge of what they will enjoy eating.

Let's consider some examples:

1. Albus goes into a steakhouse. It wasn't his choice of a restaurant, but he is there with a group of friends. The menu clearly states that they cook all their steaks to medium-rare. Albus was once a vegetarian and still gets nauseous when his meat is even vaguely pink. He likes well-done steak, but nothing else on the menu looks appetizing. Should he ask for his steak well-done?
2. Bartholomew doesn't have any food allergies, but he is sensitive to garlic, onions, chives, and other alliums. If he eats them in any quantity at all, he will have intestinal issues that are best not described at the dinner table. He's found that if he merely says he can't eat alliums, restaurants rarely take his request to leave them out seriously, and he has suffered as a result. Should he start saying that he's allergic to alliums?
3. Carmina is a supertaster of sorts. The chemicals that give heat to chilis, black pepper, ginger and their relatives taste incredibly bitter to her. Black pepper and bell peppers are merely unpleasant, but a dish that has jalepeños in it tastes like aspirin. Should she explain this when she goes to restaurants? How?

I can understand how, particularly on a busy night, a chef might get frustrated when faced with having to make nonstandard meals. I don't really understand why a chef would get frustrated with their customers for ordering things the wrong way. To me, that smacks of hubris. For my part, I enjoy cooking with restrictions. It forces me to think outside of my comfort zone and get creative.

From left to right: white tuna ceviche, white tuna sushi, seared maple-sesame white tuna, and strawberry-balsamic white tuna sushiOur favorite local Asian grocery store, Am-Ko, carries a small selection of flash-frozen sashimi-grade fish. Every so often, we pick up a pound or so of tuna. It is far less expensive than going out for sushi, it defrosts overnight in the fridge, and it is delicious. We usually devour it raw in a ravenous frenzy, but on occasion we'll make up some sushi rice and such and pretend to be civilized.

Last week, we were in Am-Ko and, checking out their sashimi collection, we saw that they had white tuna. OMG.

For those of you who haven't had white tuna, get thee to a sushi bar immediately. The stuff is like heaven in raw fish form.

The sushi places around us don't carry it consistently, which is fair enough - we live in the middle of Illinois. We'd definitely never seen it at Am-Ko before. I began hatching plans.

The plans came to fruition near-flawlessly. I made white tuna four ways.

• White tuna ceviche - I took some tuna and marinated it for about an hour in lime juice and and a bit of triple-sec and vinegar (+kosher salt). Ceviche usually marinates longer than that, but this was fish that I'd happily eat raw. It turned out amazingly well - the lime juice had just started to cook the outside, which led to a nice textural and flavor differential across the piece of fish.
• White tuna sushi - the classic, made with wasabi and vinegared rice. Unfortunately, the rice we had in the house didn't want to stick to itself (it mostly wanted to stick to my fingers). Really tasty though.
  
• Seared maple-sesame white tuna - I mixed up a bit of maple syrup and sesame oil, dipped both sides of the tuna in it, and seared each side for about 20 seconds in a cast iron pan. Still close to raw on the inside, this was great: sweet and smoky and rich. I should have made more of it.
• Strawberry-balsamic white tuna sushi - This was my experiment. Playing on the idea of vinegared rice, I blended a strawberry with some aged balsamic and mixed that in with the rice. It worked. White tuna is incredibly rich, and when complemented with the sweetness of the strawberry and the bite of the balsamic, everything just fell into place. When I added a bit of soy sauce, it was even better.

Can we have too much of a good thing?

It turns out, yes. We can.

Food blogs don't often talk about the less than salutory effects that food can have upon your body, but I'm going to do so here. If you're squeamish, stop reading now.

OK?

Apparently, not everything that is sold as white tuna is, in fact, white tuna... or even tuna. It turns out that what we bought was escolar. Escolar is delicious. It is incredibly tasty and rich. Much of this is due to the high oil content (about 20%) of its meat. The problem is that people don't really metabolize this oil... and it largely passes right through them in a... not-so-controlled... manner. This doesn't really happen when you eat a small quantity of the fish (like a piece of sushi or two), but if you gorge yourself on it... Well, let's just say you'll be remarkably well lubricated the next day.

So... local people... I don't want to warn you off of Am-Ko's frozen sashimi. It is good stuff. I'd just suggest that maybe you get the red tuna instead of the white.

StillTasty is a potentially useful website that provides guidelines on how long your food will remain good to eat if kept in storage. It contains information on how long things will keep in the pantry, in the refrigerator, and in the freezer. It also contains storage tips.

Unfortunately, it doesn't contain individual citations indicating information sources. The only citation information that I see indicates that the information was gleaned primarily from a variety of U.S. government agencies.

To me, that suggested that the information was, perhaps, a bit overcautious. These are the agencies that decided to redefine the temperatures of what counts as rare and medium rare cooked beef so that they corresponded to traditional definitions of medium and medium well. I did a bit of poking around, and, yes, the information here is overcautious: they indicate that preserved foods such as beef jerky and pickles should be refrigerated if opened and have no safe pantry life (measured in days). Still, it is better to be overcautious when health is concerned.

Blueberries are generally considered a superfood. According to Kitchen Table Medicine, freezing blueberries increases the bioavailability of the antioxidant proanthocyanin. I'll still take fresh blueberries over frozen when they are available, but this is good news. Frozen blueberries are available year-round and reasonably tasty.

Image by Kevin Dooley under Creative Commons licenseSalt has a bad reputation.

Personally, I think it is undeserved.