Still Cooking

Last week I made "Baked Cut-Up Chicken with Fruit" from Mollie Katzen's Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen.

Although Ms. Katzen suggests using a cut-up whole chicken, I just used a package of chicken thighs which my father bought at Whole Foods.  First, I made a spice mix with pepper, paprika, salt, cumin, and cinnamon.  Then I rubbed the chicken with it.  After I put the thighs in the pan, I surrounded them with lots of peeled garlic cloves, sliced onions, dried apricots, dried figs, and prunes.

Finally, I finely sliced an orange (including its peel) and mixed it in, too.  Ms. Katzen points out that it is really important to use an organic orange since much of the pesticide used on non-organic citrus stays in the peel.

After I finished filling the pan, I put on the lid and put the dish in the oven for an hour. After that time, we took the dish out, basted it, and flipped the chicken. Then I put it back in for twenty minutes.  Then I removed it again, basted it, and put it in for a final ten minutes without the lid.

I served the chicken on some whole wheat couscous.  My mother made steamed broccoli with a little walnut oil to dress it.  It was a great meal.  I am eager to make it for my grandparents when I visit them in Florida for our New Year's celebration.

Get Cooking

Recently, I have been cooking out of Mollie Katzen's new book Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen.  My mother gave me the book so I could continue to learn to cook as part of homeschooling this year.

 Last night I made a peach and nectarine crisp. It was very good!  The original recipe called for apples but Ms Katzen suggests using other fruit as well.

The fruit we used was from the farmer's market.  We bought a huge basket of nectarines.  Because they were seconds (meaning a little rotten, but still great for pies) they were only a dollar for the whole basket!

On top of the cut-up fruit, I put a sort of crust-like topping made out of oats and other things mixed with butter.

*  *  *

About a week ago I made macaroni and cheese, also from this book.  I used two cheeses for the sauce, a Parmesan and a Cheddar.  I grated them both on a box grater until I had enough for the dish.

The sauce was a roux, made by combining flour, butter, mustard, pepper, milk, and later, cheese over slow heat.

At the end, I added steamed broccoli to the noodles...

then topped it with breadcrumbs...

and baked it for 20 minutes.

I had a lot of fun making--and eating--both the macaroni and cheese and the peach/nectarine crisp.  They were delicious!

The Young Omnivore's Dilemma

The The Omnivore's Dilemma is a book which talks about four meals the author Michael Pollan eats that can teach us about the different ways food is produced and eaten in the United States. I read the new version for young readers, The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat.


First, the fast food meal.
For his first meal, Michael Pollan ate the classic fast food meal, a hamburger. But what a hamburger means now is very different from the what it used to mean. Farmers get paid very little and aren't always treated fairly. Both chickens and cows often live in feedlots where they are tightly packed together and often kept in the dark. It turns out that cows are not even eating grass anymore. Instead, they now eat corn. And the corn they eat is sprayed with harmful chemicals. Cows eating corn is not healthy for cows and is not healthy for people who eat hamburger, either. One of the problems is that when a cow eats corn, a type of harmful e-coli can develop more easily. The bacteria live in the meat and can kill people who eat it.  Raising food this way is also harmful to the environment.

Second, the industrial organic meal.
For this meal, Pollan cooks only with organic ingredients—that is, foods that are grown without pesticides and chemical fertilizers. With meat, the situation is often the same as above, except the corn is not sprayed. When you eat organic vegetables, you can guarantee that fewer chemicals get in your body. So organic is definitely a step better than the conventional fast food meal. But the way the animals are raised is still a problem and the ways workers are treated also needs fixing.  Also, the food has to be shipped a long way from where it is grown, meaning it requires a lot of oil to get food to the grocery store.  This is bad for the environment.

Third, food grown on a farm.
Joel Salatin calls himself a grass farmer. His cows feed on grass and weeds in the farm's large open pastures. The cows' manure attracts flies and then his chickens eat the flies as natural protein. The manure also feeds the grass and weeds which his cows eat. It is a natural circle that continues without any pesticides or fertilizers or food grown elsewhere. Salatin’s farm Polyface is near DC. I have friends who get their meat from there. Michael Pollan has friends that live near Joel’s farm too and so he travelled there to cook a meal for them. On the menu was applewood-smoked BBQ chicken, roasted sweet corn, arugula "rocket" salad, and a chocolate soufflé. This sounds so delicious!  Pollan knew the animals on the farm had lived a good life, the workers there were treated well, and the food was healthier.

Fourth, a hunter-gatherer meal.
For this meal, Pollan only served food that was hunted, gathered, or grown by someone he knew. Angelo Garro is an avid hunter and mushroom gatherer who also fishes and gathers wild plants like fennel. Michael hunted boar with him and also went mushroom foraging. He then held a party and almost everyone who came brought something they had created themselves from special ingredients they found or grew.  I like the way the author talks about how connection with the food we eat means our meals become special.

*  *  *

This book talks about how the food system works. It explains how much is bad and how we can start to fix the problems.  I thought the book was really inspiring.  I knew a lot of the information already from my parents (who read the grown-up version when it came out), but reading this book myself really pressed the information home for me.  Now I often don't order meat at a restaurant if I think was raised on feedlots.  (I still love Vietnamese Pho soup though....)

I highly recommend this book to young readers as well as anyone who doesn't have a lot of time or background about food issues.