Look, mom! A healthy, gluten-free matzoh ball to kvell over.

Nothing says Passover like matzoh ball soup, the original Jewish comfort food. Feeling under the weather? Have some matzoh ball soup.  Depressed?  Have some matzoh ball soup. Homesick? Defrost some of mom’s matzoh ball soup.   Matzoh ball soup devotees tend to fall into one of two camps: those who prefer a feather-light “floater,” and those who prefer a firm, dense “sinker.”

Of course, for those of us who can no longer partake in matzoh or its glutinous derivatives such as the matzoh meal used to make matzoh balls, the soup course of the Passover Seder–which falls on April 8-9th this year– is a sad, sad time.  What’s more depressing than spending two hours recalling your ancestors’ persecution and suffering, only to be served a steaming bowl of plain, matzohball-less broth? While I’ve tolerated this indignity in years past, I decided that this year, it was time to MMODGFMB.  That’s Hebrew for: make my own damn gluten-free matzoh balls. Enough was enough.

I discovered two main approaches to GF matzoh ball-making online.  One called for only potato starch in lieu of the matzoh meal, and the other called for a combination of potato starch and almond meal.  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if there might be a third option.  After all, almond meal is significantly more caloric than the matzoh meal it replaces owing to the natural fat in the nut oils; and since the soup is just the first of many, many courses at the traditional Seder dinner, I’d prefer to pace myself.  As for a matzoh ball made entirely of potato starch?  It seemed like more of a (heavy, heavy) potato dumpling than a matzoh ball to me. Besides, Passover desserts deliver their own fair share of potato starch, and a nice, Jewish gluten-free girl cannot live on potato starch alone.

I decided to see if I could find a gluten-free flour that was also kosher for Passover with which to fashion my GF matzoh balls.  I even consulted the family Rabbi, who confirmed what I had hoped: quinoa is considered by most authorities to be kosher for Passover.  Now, without delving into theological intricacies, I will mention that quinoa flakes may or may not be processed in a facility that is free of all off-limits-for-Passover grains, so if you’re on the more religiously observant side, you may want to err on the side of caution here.  And that’s all I’ll say on that topic.

Can you tell which is the "control" matzoh ball and which is the gluten-free one?

I decided to use the recipe on the back of a standard matzoh meal box as a foundation off which to riff on several matzoh ball experiments, and prepared a control batch of matzoh-meal matzoh balls against which my gluten-eating husband could judge the experiments.  There were several variables to consider: quinoa flour or quinoa flakes?  Alone or mixed with potato starch?  Water, seltzer or no liquid at all?  Xanthan gum to bind the batter and promote sponginess or no xanthan gum?   It took two days and 8 different experiments, but I am happy to report that the following recipe produced a matzoh-less quinoa “matzoh ball” that is firm but not dense, fluffy but not overly feathery. It tastes like a matzoh ball is supposed to taste, and it’s made with whole grain, high-protein, quinoa flakes instead of starchy or heavy alternatives.

Recipe: Tamara’s Gluten-free Quinoa “Matzoh” Balls

Makes 10-12 quinoa balls

1 cup quinoa flakes*

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

2 large eggs

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt (use regular iodized salt, not kosher salt)

A sprinkle of ground black pepper to your liking

* look for quinoa flakes in the hot cereal/oatmeal section of your grocery store, or order online from the gluten-free mall or your favorite site.  Ancient Harvest is the most well-known manufacturer.

Directions:

1. Measure out quinoa flakes and xanthan gum and combine in a small bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the two eggs.  Add oil, salt and pepper and beat again until combined.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix well until combined.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
4. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  (You don’t want the matzoh balls to be crowded).
5. Remove batter from refrigerator and wet hands.  With wet hands, fashion a SMALL amount of batter into a smooth ball shape and drop into the boiling water.  (For reference, the batter should be enough to make 10-12 matzoh balls, so portion each one accordingly.  Each uncooked ball should be no larger than the size of a ping-pong ball… they will expand when cooking, and if they’re too big, the middle may not cook through sufficiently.)
6. Cover pot and cook the quinoa balls, maintaining a rolling boil, for 25 minutes.
7. After 25 minutes, remove the balls from boiling water with a slotted spoon and let sit to cool for a few minutes.  Then, refrigerate the balls until ready to serve.
8. Before serving, place quinoa balls in pot of soup to warm them through.  Serve, and accept heaping praise from your gluten-intolerant guests at what a considerate host you are.

Approximate nutrition info per ball (assumes recipe makes 10 balls): 150 calories, 7g carbohydrate, of which 0.5g is fiber, 2.5g protein, 13g fat.

So now that you’ve got the renegade GF matzoh ball recipe all squared away, check out this recipe for a newfangled lemongrass matzoh ball soup broth to float them in from NPR!

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Welcome back to my life, yogurt.

From what I can tell, many people in the nutrition field regard people who claim to be lactose intolerant with a dose of skepticism.  Apparently, some data somewhere shows that many people who think they are actually aren’t, and this data has somehow made its way into nutrition textbooks, causing the aforementioned skepticism.

Now, it is true that it’s very rare for someone to be completely and totally lactose intolerant–as in, they produce zero lactase enzyme and cannot digest even a molecule of lactose.  But that doesn’t change the fact that dairy products in varying forms and varying doses cause a lot of people a lot of grief.  The party line is that people who have some sort of lactase deficiency may not be able to drink a glass of milk, but they can often tolerate yogurt and cheese, since the culturing process helps break down some of the lactose.  My experience has been that this may be true for some people, but certainly not for  everyone.  The only way to know, unfortunately, is through trial and error.  Which means that for some lactose intolerant people, even yogurt may be off limits. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other ways to get calcium in your diet if you can’t eat dairy, but few of them are quite as convenient, ubiquitous, portable and tasty as yogurt. I’ll confess: when I watch you eat yogurt, I get major yogurt envy.

First, let’s face our tormentor for a moment:

Lactose is the natural form of sugar found in milk, and is composed of two simple sugars (monosaccharides) called glucose and galactose that are bonded together.  Since our guts prefer to digest their sugars in monosaccharide form, we have cells on the tips of the fingerlike projections (called villi) in our intestines that secrete digestive enzymes to break down disaccharides into monosaccharides so that they can be absorbed.  The enzyme responsible for breaking down lactose is called lactase.  Lactase production is essential for human survival, since infants rely exclusively on (human) milk to survive for their first several months of life.  It is incredibly rare–and often fatal–for a baby to be born with lactose intolerance.  But as luck (or evolution) would have it, most people on earth are genetically programmed to produce less lactase as we get older, presumably since milk wasn’t supposed to be our sole source of nutrition anymore.   How much less lactase you produce will determine to what extent you can tolerate foods that contain lactose.  Are you with me?

(As an aside, because the lactase-producing cells are located on the tips of the intestinal villi, anything that damages the villi can result in a temporary form of lactose intolerance until they have the chance to regenerate.  This commonly happens if you have a nasty bout of diarrhea that lasts more than a couple of days– or perhaps if you’ve had undiagnosed celiac disease for awhile that caused inflammation and damage to your intestinal lining.  Now, say, if your child has mild diarrhea for a day or two, there’s absolutely no need to withhold milk.  But if there’s some severe diarrhea going on or a chronic condition, it’s probably a good idea to lay off the cow juice until their guts have a chance to heal a bit.)

Why your intestines freak out when you have lactose intolerance (scientifically speaking)

Now, what happens if you can’t break down lactose in your intestine?  Well, depending on how much you ate, it will increase the sugar concentration in your gut by a little or a lot.  And if you’ll remember back to that lesson on osmosis from your 8th grade biology class, this draws water into your intestines from the little blood vessels that surround them in an attempt to dilute the sugary contents.  Anytime lots of of water rushes into your pipes, diarrhea is not far behind.  Additionally, the undigested lactose keeps moving along into your colon, where it meets the friendly bacteria who live there.  And these bacteria are most delighted to feast on the sugary bounty you’ve fed them.  As they digest the lactose that you couldn’t, they put off gasses as a byproduct.  This is what accounts for the flatulence.  Fun!

Finally!  Some lactose-free yogurt options.

Back to the yogurt dilemma.  I’ve been waiting for years for the Lactaid brand to come out with a lactose-free yogurt.  But I guess they were too busy counting their money from sales of their lactose-free milks, ice creams and cottage cheeses to bother.  Or maybe they read the same textbook I did and believed that all lactose intolerant people could eat yogurt just fine.  (Not all of us can.)  Or maybe they saw how much soy yogurt is sold at supermarkets and thought that lactose-intolerant people had a perfectly acceptable yogurt substitute so they didn’t need to bother making us another one. (Um… have they *tasted* soy yogurt?  It tastes chemically and weird to me.  Plus, it’s not as if soy is a digestive walk in the park.  If I’m going to be gassy anyway, I’d rather just eat real yogurt. Sheesh.)

As the yogurt aisle grew longer, and options proliferated, I became even more despondent that, with all of these choices, there still wasn’t one suitable for the intestinally-challenged.  And then, as I looked across the crowded aisle, my eyes locked with two new yogurts that looked like they were made just for people like me.

The first one was a no-brainer product that I was hoping Lactaid would have come up with eons ago: an organic, cow’s milk yogurt made with low-fat lactose-free milk.  It’s a brand called “True,” it comes from Vermont, and it tastes way better than any conventional yogurt I remember having.  I love that it has a very short ingredient list and no artificial flavors, sweeteners or preservatives.  The vanilla flavor tastes like actual vanilla bean, not that fakey chemically vanilla flavor.  And its sweetened just enough to taste good, but it’s not loaded full of sugar.  It is dee-licious. Unfortunately, I had to pay a premium for this yogurt that met every single criterion on my checklist: it cost $1.79 for a 5 oz container at Whole Foods.  But maybe prices will come down once you all start buying it, too.

*** 2010 update:  since originally posting this, the True Yogurt company had ceased production due to loss of their facilities.  For more ideas on super-low lactose yogurt options made from cow’s milk, check out my post on MORE Yogurt Options for the Lactose-Challenged.

The second product I discovered is called  So Delicious, and it’s made from coconut milk instead of cow’s milk, so it’s naturally lactose-free. Because it contains no dairy at all, it’s appropriate for vegans and people who are actually allergic to cow’s milk protein (caesin).  I think it’s a pretty decent product:  one 6oz container has 150 calories, which is the same amount as a Dannon All-Natural vanilla yogurt, but more than one of those light/recuced calorie yogurts; it has too much sugar added for sure, but no more than most other yogurts out there, and actually less than the Dannon we just referenced; and it’s fortified with 25% of your calcium for the day in a form that is very well absorbed. As a bonus, they throw in some vitamin B12, which is a difficult vitamin to get from the diet if you’re a vegetarian.  As far as taste goes, you definitely get the subtle coconut flavor in the background, which I quite like.  It certainly beats the not-so-subtle soybean flavor of soy yogurts in my book.  (This company also makes soy yogurt, though, so don’t confuse the two.)  I liked it, and think it’s a very respectable yogurt substitute for the dairy and soy-challenged.

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I never much cared for stuffed grape leaves (or dolmas, as they’re known in Greek) until I tasted my mother-in-law’s version.  While I always found other grape leaves to be too briny or bitter or mushy or flavorless, Bella’s are taut little rolls of flavorful, textured rice filling wrapped in a leaf that’s been soaked to remove the tangy briny residue, and marinated in a heavenly lemon-juice-olive oil-garlic sauce until they soak up its Mediterranean deliciousness. 

From the moment I first tasted one, I knew I had to have the recipe.

As soon as I asked for it, everyone just smiled at me pityingly.

Bella is a wonderful, self-taught, instinctive cook who has never used a recipe in her life.  Even when she owned her own cafe, and made authentic grape leaves, hummus and tabbouleh all from scratch, she still never used recipes.  I asked her how she managed to replicate her recipe each time, she replied that she just knows how its supposed to look.

Still undaunted, I decided to invite her over and have her give me a grapeleaf tutorial.  My plan was to write down the ingredients and quantities in a veritable public service effort to liberate the glorious recipe from her head and share it with the grape-leaf deprived masses.  I will preface the rest of this posting by admitting that I was only quasi-successful in my mission: I kinda-sorta pinned her down to a recipe whose quantities will fill a 9×13 baking dish stacked with 2 layers of tightly-packed stuffed leaves, about 80 total.

Please forgive the loosey-goosey nature of the pseudo-recipe below.  Believe me when I say it is a veritable coup that I even managed to wrangle this out of her.  To compensate for the shortcomings, I provided some photos so that you can see what things are supposed to look like at different stages, which is Bella’s preferred gauge.  And of course, taste as you go and feel free to improvise.

You’ll need:

16 oz of jarred grape leaves

For the filling:

3 cups uncooked white rice

1 cup uncooked quinoa or millet

1 cup pine nuts or sunflower seeds, toasted

*approximately* 1/2 cup fresh mint, chopped (or, a bunch of peppermint tea bags opened up, contents added to the rice until it looks like the photo below.  Sorry… I told you this was only a pseudo-recipe.)

Dried parsley, maybe about 2 TBSP?  Can be substituted for fresh parsley or freshly chopped chives, too.

Salt and pepper to taste.  Spicy Hungarian paprika to taste, optional.

For the marinade:

1/2 cup lemon juice

1/2 cup olive oil

1 bulb garlic, crushed

A handful of fresh mint, chopped

Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions:

1. Soak the jarred grape leaves in a big mixing bowl full of cold water to remove the brine.  Dump water and repeat 2-3 times until the leaves don’t taste salty or feel slimy from the brine.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Cook the rice and quinoa separately per package instructions.  (~4.5 cups water for the rice and 2 cups water for the quinoa).
4. Meanwhile, while rice is cooking and leaves are soaking, toast the pine nuts or sunflower seeds in a dry saute pan or toaster oven, just until golden/fragrant.
5. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cooked rice, cooked quinoa, pine nuts/sunflower seeds, mint and parsley.  Season to taste, making sure the mixture is salted enough that it would taste good if you were to eat it as a side dish.  It should look like this:
6. Meanwhile, make the marinade.  Combine lemon juice, olive oil, crushed garlic and chopped mint into a small bowl, and season with salt and pepper.  The marinade will be very strong– garlicky and tangy.  That’s what you want.
   
7. Using your now-drained but still wet grape leaves, lay one grape leaf flat on your working surface.  If it has tears or holes in it, place a smaller leaf on top of it to patch it up.
8. Spoon a small amount of rice filling onto the base of the leaf and use your fingers to pinch the rice into a more compact row.  
9. Begin wrapping the grape leaf from the base, pulling the leaf base tightly over your rice mound.  Fold in the sides like a burrito and finish rolling.  The final product should be tight and compact.  Place the stuffed grape leaf into your baking dish, and pack them in tightly together, with the end flap down, as you continue to roll more.  When the bottom of the dish is full but before you start stacking the second layer, drizzle half of the marinade on top of the stuffed leaves. 
   
10. Continue rolling and stack a second layer on top until the baking dish is full. Drizzle the second half of the marinade onto the top of the second layer of grape leaves.
    
11. Now, fill the baking dish with some water until it’s ~3/4 up the sides of the dish.  (I know it sounds weird, but it will help cook the grape leaves through and will boil off in the oven.)  Cover with aluminum foil and cook for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and cook for another 30 minutes, until the water boils away.  The top layer of grape leaves will be a little dried and brown, but shouldn’t be burnt. The bottom layer will be softer, but more saturated with flavor.  

Bella’s grape leaves taste best on the second day once they’ve been soaking in their delicious marinade overnight and after being reheated in the oven until warmed through.  (Or, microwaved in a pinch).  Even better, pour some more lemon juice and olive oil on the grape leaves before re-heating.  

Now, if I could just get her to give up her hummus recipe…

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So... you from around here?

Amid the excitement surrounding St. Patrick’s Day this week, a long-awaited milestone quietly took effect on March 16, but was celebrated widely by food safety advocates.  Federal “Country of Origin Labeling” legislation (or, “COOL,” in hip DC-parlance) mandated by the Farm Bill finally took effect, despite longstanding protests from the meat industry.

Although the law leaves a lot up to the discretion of food producers and marketers, it does require that unprocessed food items be labeled with their country of origin.  So for example, it would cover fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, ground beef/whole muscle meat, fish, fresh poultry and nuts…but not foods like bagged spinach, bacon, or frozen chicken nuggets.  In addition, seafood must be labeled by its method of production as either farm-raised or wild-caught.

So what should we make of this?

Well, for starters, it will make things easier for aspiring locavores.  You’ll know where all of your produce, meat and fish come from, which can help guide your choices if you’re trying to eat more locally.  (Though honestly, most of us didn’t need federally-mandated labeling legislation to know that our bananas aren’t from around these here parts, or that those big red tomatoes available in the dead of winter weren’t grown nearby.)

Personally, I’m most interested in this legislation as it pertains to fish.

Did anyone else catch that article that the New York Times did on the Chinese fish industry back in 2007?  It highlighted a (growing) problem of banned carcinogens, illegal antibiotics, pesticides (including DDT) and additives that were showing up in imported Chinese seafood, which according to the article comprised 22% of all seafood sold in the US.  (My guess is that percentage is even higher now.)  And while the FDA does routinely inspect samples, it only ends up checking a measly 1% of all imported food, meaning that unsafe fish are almost certainly finding their way into our food supply and onto our plates.  The problem up until now has been that there was no way to know where your fish came from, unless your supermarket volunteered the information.

Of course, labeling only helps us make better decisions about what to buy if it’s truthful.  (Too bad they didn’t name the legislation the Truthful Country of Origin Labeling Act, but I guess T’COOL wasn’t as catchy.)  In another brilliant fish-related expose, the New York Times sent samples of fish, purchased at various New York stores and labeled as “wild,” to an independent laboratory to verify whether they were indeed wild.  (About 90% of all salmon in the U.S. is farm-raised, which explains why wild salmon routinely costs 3-5x more than farmed.) The analysis found that only ONE of the eight samples tested positive for being wild; all of the others were overpriced, farm-raised imposters.  And they were being sold by some pretty snooty places, I may add.

Sigh.  As if the fish counter wasn’t already fraught with enough anxiety about what to purchase, between the mercury and the PCBs…. and now the added layer of wild-caught vs. farmed, and countries of origin to contend with.  What’s an omega-3 loving pescatarian to do?

Well, there are no easy answers.  But here are some things that I do.

1. At the risk of being sued by the Chinese fish industry, I will say that I don’t buy any seafood imported from China.  Period.  It’s never been a problem at Whole Foods, but I’ve passed on the tantalizingly-inexpensive fish sold at BJ’s wholesale club for precisely this reason.  Also, be sure to check the label on frozen seafood–like shrimp and scallops–as these often come from Asia and may possibly come from China specifically.
2. Download the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guide, which combines a multitude of factors, including safety AND sustainability, in recommending the best seafood picks.  (The guides are even customized by geographic region).  The list gets updated frequently, as trends in overfishing change fish stocks dramatically, so make sure to check back every few months for an updated list.  Alternatively, you can download it to your iPhone so that its always with you when shopping.  You may be surprised to see that there are plenty of farmed fish varieties that make the cut as far as safety and sustainability go, so wild isn’t automatically the best choice in all circumstances.
3. Consider canned fish.  Canned salmon is almost universally wild-caught, low in mercury/PCBs and usually Alaskan.  As for tuna, look for products labeled  “troll,”  “hook and line” or “pole” caught, as they are the most sustainable.   (If you can afford to spend $5 on a can of tuna during a recession, then check out a brand called American Tuna and support their sustainable fishing practices. Your financial investment will buy you the peace of mind that your tuna comes from the US, and was caught using very sustainable practices.)  And sardines are making a huge comeback these days, with stores offering fancy, European-style versions bathed in swanky sauces…. and chefs embracing them for sandwiches and salads.  Today’s sardines are not the tinny, unsexy cast-offs you may recall.  They are worth a second look (and taste!)
4. See what your farmer’s market has to offer. Here in New York, there are vendors who sell locally-caught fish and scallops at the Union Square greenmarket, for prices on par with what’s being sold right across the street in Whole Foods.

So next time you’re in the supermarket, check out the new labels across the store and let me know what you make of it all; I’d love to know whether they change your buying habits in any way!

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Move over, Irish Oatmeal. Green Tea porridge is kicking off St. Patty's Day this year.

We’re approaching St. Patrick’s Day, the day of the year that all of New York’s bagel shops color their dough green to help people start off their mornings in the spirit of the day.  People who can eat wheat, that is.

I racked my brain to think of a healthy, green breakfast option for the intestinally-challenged, and those friends of ours who prefer not to kick off their days with 500 calories-worth of pure, refined flour…even if it is dyed in a festive, springy color.

And I decided that this would be the perfect occasion to break out my little canister of Matcha green tea powder.  

Matcha is finely-ground green tea that is used in the Japanese tea ceremony, and for culinary uses such as coloring/flavoring a variety of confections and soba noodles.  While all tea varieties come from the same plant (green, black, oolong), the way the leaves are processed is what distinguishes them as far as taste and nutrition.  Green tea is the least processed type of tea, and therefore it contains the highest levels of an antioxidant phytochemical called EGCG.  Most of the research on the health benefits of green tea are from Asia, where consumption reportedly averages  around 3 cups per day in many areas; therefore, it’s unlikely that Americans will derive the same type of benefits that these studies show just from having a weekly mug of it at our local Chinese restaurants.  But still, a healthy food is a healthy food, and since it’s a calorie-free way to add a nice antioxidant boost (not to mention a natural green tint) to our diets, it’s earned a place in our collective pantries.

I found my green tea powder at a local, Asian-owned health food store. If you can’t find it locally, you can order it online.  Don’t be put off by the teensy-ness of the container: a little goes a VERY long way as far as color and flavor, which is good, since I paid $10 for 1 oz.  (If used for tea, 1 oz would make 28 eight-ounce mugs; you’d use about 1g of powder per cup of hot water.)  Of course, you don’t have to use relatively expensive Matcha powder to get green tea’s benefits; you can always just buy green tea bags and make a nice steaming mug for yourself.  Or just order a cup of it from Starbuck’s.  If you have a reusable water-bottle that travels with you, try filling it with home-brewed iced green tea once in the morning instead of water, and you can sip up the health benefits as you go about your day.  As far as those bottle, sweetened, iced green tea drinks go (e.g., Sobe, Snapple), from what I can tell they don’t contain very much by way of  EGCG, so you’re unlikely to derive much benefit from them. After all, the less processed, the better.   (Note: green tea does contain caffeine.  According to the clever scientists at the Mayo Clinic, it has 30-50 mg per cup of brewed tea, which is about 1/3 to 1/2 the amount in the same amount of regular brewed coffee. So keep that in mind as you plan your green tea strategy so that you’re not awake all night congratulating yourself on the new healthy habit you just picked up .)

The benefits of Green Tea

There are literally thousands of studies on the health benefits of green tea, so I’ll focus on a biggie from the sexiest publication around: the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  The study, published in 2006, followed over 40,000 middle aged and older adults in Japan for years, and concluded that even at one cup per day, people realized some health benefits, but that the more green tea people drank, the greater the health-protective benefits they experienced.  Some highlights:

Compared to people who drank 1 cup of green tea per day or less:

• At 5 or more cups per day, there was a 12%(men)-20%(women) lower risk of dying, period.  
• At 2-5 cups per day, women had a 32%-39% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease (the risk was more reduced with each additional cup)
• at 2-5 cups per day, men had a 15%-35% reduced risk of dying from a stroke (the risk was more reduced with each additional cup.) 
• At 2-5 cups per day, women had a 21%-42% reduced risk of dying from a stroke (the risk was more reduced with each additional cup)

A review of the scientific literature also shows a possible role in breast cancer prevention and recurrence for women with high levels of consumption (5 or more cups per day), but individual research study results are not consistently statistically significant and should therefore be considered as promising, but not definitive.

There are multiple biochemical mechanisms believed to be behind green tea’s health-promoting effects, ranging from inhibiting the generation of new blood vessels (which tumors need to grow), working at the DNA-level to turn on genes that promote cell-death of cancer cells, inhibiting an enzyme responsible for producing inflammatory proteins in our bodies, and acting as antioxidants which help stave off routine cell damage that results from the normal rough and tumble of living.

Matcha-making

I will confess that I originally bought my matcha powder to color a white chocolate ganache that was going in the center of some truffles that we made for the holidays. But surely, healthy matcha powder must be destined for more noble endeavors than to color my truffles or to flavor a bazilion-calorie Starbuck’s Green Tea Frappuccino, musn’t it?

And so, my matcha powder met its destiny in this easy, whole-grain, gluten-free and green breakfast recipe that I invented just for the occassion:

Recipe: St. Patty’s Day Green Tea Porridge

Serves 2

2 1/2 cups lowfat milk or water (or some combo thereof)

1/2 tsp (kosher) salt

1/2 cup Cream of Buckwheat cereal

1 tsp matcha green tea powder

Maple syrup, honey or sugar to taste

Directions

Bring milk/water to a boil with the salt.  (I use 1 cup 1% milk and 1.5 cups water, but any way you do it is fine.  Using milk will sneak some easy calcium into your day.) Add buckwheat cereal and bring mixture to a low boil again, stirring frequently. When cereal starts to thicken but before its totally finished, mix in the green tea powder and mix well enough to break up any powdery green clumps.  Finish cooking, sweeten with the sweetener of your choice (I used maple syrup, but honey or a sprinkle of sugar would work fine, too).  

Nutrition info per serving: (assumes preparation w/ 1 cup 1% milk and 1.5 cups water; does not include sweetener)

Calories: 185, Carbohydrate: 42g (of which 1g is fiber); Protein: 6g; Fat: 1.5g.

(Note: preparing it with water only makes each serving 140 calories, 36g carbohydrate, 2g protein and 0g fat.)

Top of the morning to you, indeed!

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I finished my last midterm last night and decided to reward myself for a week of library-dwelling with a glass of lovely Argentine Malbec.  Which got me to thinking:  for some time, observers have noted what is referred to as the “French Paradox”: the fact that rates of coronary heart disease in France are relatively low despite the fact that the French diet is relatively high in saturated fats…which we know to be directly associated with heart disease. It has been suggested that this phenomenon could be explained by the relatively high consumption of red wine that the French drink, and it argued by many (particularly those employed by the wine industry, I imagine) that red wine was a healthy and cardio-protective beverage.

This has always bothered me. The data on alcohol consumption and health is quite conflicting, with some research showing that moderate drinking is associated with some protective effect against heart disease… but also an increased risk of certain types of stroke. Not to mention that that any drinking at all appears to be associated with an increase of certain cancers (particularly breast). Also, there’s a direct link between chronic alcohol intake at more-than-moderate levels and liver disease. Finally, there are some other very significant differences between Americans and the French besides our drinking habits. So what’s this hoopla all about?

According to the WHO’s Global Status Report on Alcohol (2004), France has the 6th highest per-capita consumption of alcohol, which places it behind Uganda, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Moldova and Ireland. The average French person over age 15 consumes 59% more alcohol than Americans (13.5 liters versus 8.5 in the U.S.).

And indeed, it’s true: there are 106.5 per 100,000 Americans who die of heart disease annually versus 39.8 per 100,000 French people. Those statistics mean than an American is 2.7 times more likely to die of heart disease than a French person. Interestingly, though, two countries that actually have HIGHER per capita alcohol consumption than France, Ireland and the Czech Republic have even higher rates of death by coronary disease than the US: 152.6 and 148.6 deaths per 100,000 people, respectively. I have no expertise on or particular insight into these countries, but if alcohol is indeed a factor in these stats, this might be good evidence as to the dark side of alcohol’s role on cardiovascular health: namely, how in large quantities it increases risk for hemorrhagic stroke and hypertension. Indeed, a 2004 study of ~35,000 French men by Renault et al examined whether the type of alcohol mattered when it came to health protection or risk, and the answer was yes. The authors found that only moderate amounts of red wine (versus large amounts of red wine and versus any amount of alcohol in general) were associated with a reduced risk of death from all causes, and they attribute that protective effect to the phytochemical found in red wines called resveratrol. Strangely, they excluded cirrhosis (liver disease) and violent death from their analysis; it seems to me that the total death numbers may not have looked as impressive for red wine drinkers if they had included these outcomes, tied so closely as they are to alcohol intake. But who am I to argue? The strongest protective effects were seen as 2-3 glasses/day for men, though they did not specify how large a glass was. (Sounds silly, but my experience has been that a wine glass in your typical American restaurant is way bigger and fuller than the ones served at a French bistro…)

The red wine variable would, then, seem to help account for the difference in heart disease mortality rates among the Czech Republic, Ireland and France, as the Czechs and Irish are the world’s #1 and #2 beer consumers, respectively. But I still wanted to know whether the wine-drinking French actually live longer, or do they just die of different things?

The answer is: generally, yes they do. The average French person’s life expectancy at birth is 80.87 years, which ranks it at #9 in the world. (Not bad!) In the U.S., our average life expectancy at birth is 78.14 years (#47 in the world). But if you’re a French male, your life expectancy is quite lower: 76.8 years, versus 74.89 years for American males. (The women pull up the average substantially: 84.23 years for French women and 81.13 years for Americans.)

So what are the French dying of?

Cardiovascular disease (heart disease and strokes) are still the top causes of death in France, accounting for about 17% of all deaths. (They account for about 32% of all deaths in the US). Lung cancer and pulmonary diseases comprise another 8% of deaths (all that wine goes so well with a cigarette, after all!). And while it didn’t make the top 10, I thought it was worth mentioning liver disease, since it was sneakily excluded from that 2004 French wine-drinker study and is directly linked to long-term, chronic alcohol intake. As it turns out, the French die of cirrhosis 57% more than Americans (which ties nicely to the fact that the average French person drinks 59% more by volume than the average American does.) That’s not very paradoxical at all. Similarly, a 2007 article in the Journal of Hepatology reported the mortality rate of cirrhosis among French men in 2000-2002 to be 14.45 per 100,000 men, versus 9.73 per 100,000 men in America. That’s about 48% higher.

And what if the reason the French live longer has nothing to do with the wine? There are other differences between our populations besides our drinking habits, you know. 33% of the US population is obese, compared with only ~9% of the French population, for example. That means an American adult is 3.7 times more likely to be obese than a French adult, which should help to account for the 2.7 times greater mortality rate from heart disease in the US, shouldn’t it?  According to several research articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, obesity is related to ~112,000 “excess” deaths in the US annually, with the vast majority of those deaths from cardiovascular disease. Couldn’t this be a key factor behind the reason that the French have such a lower rate of heart disease mortality? And if so, then what’s the fascination with the red wine?  Maintaining a healthy body weight as a heart disease risk prevention strategy may not be as fun as drinking a half bottle of red wine every night, but it sure produces fewer hangovers. (And fewer adverse health effects). Sorry to be such a buzzkill, but it does stand to reason.

I’ll admit that these musings raise more questions than they answer. So as far as whether to drink or not drink, here’s what I make of it all:

1. If you currently drink ~2 drinks/day or less (males) or 1 drink/day or less (females), you may get a slightly protective benefit against heart disease, so enjoy! It seems that red wine may afford an even better benefit, though any type of alcohol should do the trick. If you’re drinking more than this amount, you may want to consider cutting down.
2. But bear in mind that “one drink” is not necessarily one glass of wine as poured by your neighborhood bartender in a monster-sized red wine goblet. It’s 5 fluid ounces of wine. In other words, 1 bottle of wine is 5 standard servings. So if you’re used to splitting a bottle every night with your best friend or spouse, try inviting a few more people on on the fun, or buying yourself a really pretty bottle stopper to save some for tomorrow.
3. If you don’t drink at all now, I wouldn’t start doing so for ‘health reasons,’ as there are plenty of ‘health reasons’ not to drink, too.
4. If you’re obese, drinking red wine is not a silver bullet for helping to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. In fact, it can make it worse by aggravating high blood pressure and increasing your triglyceride levels.
5. If you have a family history of breast cancer, you may want to seriously consider whether drinking at all is worth it to you. (And even if you don’t have a family history, if you’re overweight or have other risk factors for breast cancer, I’d proceed with caution.) There’s a lot you can do to reduce your risk of developing breast cancer, including getting regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, not drinking, and making sure to get adequate Vitamin D in your diet (try supplementing 1,000 IU/day).
6. Next time around, let’s all try to be born in France.

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Prunes are especially tasty when ensconsced in a sugary cookie!

Has anyone noticed that prunes have disappeared from the supermarket?

They’ve been replaced by “dried plums,” thanks to the clever efforts of some marketing gurus working for the California Prun…er, I mean ‘Dried Plum’ trade association.  While normally this is the kind of slick food marketing practice I deplore, I forgive these marketers for two important reasons:

1. Prunes are an incredibly healthy food that get unfairly snubbed due to a nagging and unfortunate PR problem
2. Prunes are a starring ingredient in a version of Hamentaschen, the triangle-shaped, filled cookies that we Jewish people eat to celebrate a holiday called Purim, which happens to be tomorrow, Tuesday March 10, 2009.

Your grandma was right

The thing about certain stereotypes that’s so infuriating is that sometimes they’re kind of true.  Like the one about prunes being food for ‘old people.’  Indeed, my only exposure to prunes has been via my late Grandma Esther (of salmon croquettes fame), who used prunes in all sorts of cooked stews and as a filling for her homemade Hamentaschen, which she baked with us on many occasions.

In her memory, I thought I’d share her hamentaschen dough recipe (which I’ve successfully made gluten-free in the past just by substituting GF all-purpose flour) and share some thoughts on why ‘dried plums’ deserve a place in our collective trail mix alongside the pretty and lovable dried apricots, cherries, cranberries and mango slices.

Give (dried) plums a chance

1. Dried plums are one of the best food sources of potassium, an important electrolyte that is especially important to regulate blood pressure.  A diet high in potassium and low in sodium is the foundation for an eating pattern that helps people with hypertension reduce their blood pressure.
2. Dried plums are one of nature’s best remedies for constipation.  And let’s be honest: this is NOT a problem that only older people have.  (If it were, then those ridiculous Danon Activia yogurt commercials wouldn’t be on TV every five seconds.)  They ‘encourage’ the bowel with 3g of fiber per serving of 5 dried plums, and contain a mix of both insoluble fiber (which speeds things along and draws water into the gut) AND soluble fiber (which helps lower blood cholesterol and slows down stomach emptying to help make you feel full).  Additionally, dried plums contain a natural sugar alcohol called sorbitol, which tastes sweet but is not well-absorbed in our intestines.  Unabsorbed sugars draw water into the gut (remember osmosis from 8th grade biology?), which has a laxative effect.  The result is that dried plums promote regular and soft poo on top of the other health benefits they offer.  Woo hoo!
3. Finally, dried plums are a surprisingly decent source of iron.  Those same 5 dried plums contain ~1.2mg of iron, which is 15% of the daily value (for adult males; it’s only ~7% of the value for for adult females aged 19-50.). As luck would have it, the iron from vegetarian sources is notoriously poorly absorbed, but if you chase your dried plums with some OJ (or another vitamin-C rich food or drink), you can maximize the absorption potential.  Similarly, don’t couple your dried plum snack with coffee or tea (even though they sound so delicious together), as the tannins will have an inhibitory effect on iron absorption.

OK!  Enough prune prostheletyzing!

As promised, here is grandma’s Hamentaschen dough recipe.  It makes 3-4 dozen cookies, depending on the size of the circle you cut.

3 cups flour (you may substitute a gluten-free all purpose flour here, like Bob’s Red Mill)

1 cup (!!) sugar**

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil

1/4 cup orange juice

1 tsp vanilla

** if you want to cut the sugar by half to make these a bit less sinful, I’ve made this swap to terrific results: substitute 1/2 cup agave nectar for the 1 cup of sugar, and reduce the amount of orange juice to 3 TBSP and reduce the oil to 6 TBSP. The dough will seem a bit sticky at first, but once it’s chilled and then worked on the floured surface, it becomes beautiful and super easy to work with.

“Get it all together.”  (Those were her only instructions.  So I will embellish and say that once your dough is mixed, refrigerate it (covered) for about 30 minutes, then roll it out with a lightly floured rolling pin onto a flat, lightly flour-ed surface.  Use the bottom of a small drinking glass to cut circles out of the dough, and keep re-kneading the dough scraps and re-rolling it until you can’t make any more circles.)

Alas, grandma Esther neglected to leave behind a written copy of her prune filling recipe.  (Oh, the irony.)  So I turned to Joan Nathan, the diva of Jewish cooking, to borrow one from her (click the link for the recipe).  Of course, if you’re feeling lazy, just use any old jam or fruit paste (fig would be tasty) that tickles your fancy, but go easy, as jams tend to become very liquid in the oven and could leak out of your hametaschen if you add too much. Poppy seed fillings are also traditional, and you may even be able to find a store-bought filling if your grocery store sells specialty/European products.  I’ve also had great success with my homemade Cranberry Fig Jam as a hamentaschen filling, so get the recipe here.

Once your filling situation is all sorted, drop a dollop of whatever you chose in the center of your dough circles, pinch three dough corners together to form an open-faced triangle, and bake on a greased cookie pan in a 350-degree oven until they’re golden brown (10-15 minutes).

Happy Purim!

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If you stop to think about it, virtually every culture has some permutation of beans and rice.  Most vegetarians know that this has to do with the dietary principle of eating complementary proteins.  Unlike animal sources of protein, most vegetable proteins do not contain all 9 essential amino acids that our bodies cannot manufacture.  (Although some exceptions include soybeans, quinoa and teff).  Generally speaking, grains tend to have the amino acids that legumes lack, and vice versa, so if you eat them together, you’ll get all of the building blocks your body needs to synthesize whatever proteins it needs to make.  Since our bodies don’t have capacity to store amino acids in any significant way, its important to eat these complementary foods at the same meal, together.  In other words, your body can’t hang on to some amino acids at breakfast and wait for the others to show up at dinnertime in order to make what it needs to make.

I first tasted koshari in Egypt in 1995 at some nameless roadside hole-in-the-wall.  I remember it being a very comforting (and cheap) dish with rice, macaroni, lentils, crispy onions and some sort of savory sauce that tied it altogether.  Although this was before the Atkins craze, I still remember thinking it was somehow subversive to eat both rice AND pasta in the same dish.  It’s not exactly considered haute Egyptian cuisine, so you’re unlikely to see it at an Egyptian restaurant in the U.S.  But if you’ve ever eaten at an authentic Middle Eastern restaurant owned by Syrians, Jordanians or Palestinians, you may have seen its sister dish, Mujadara, which is a similar but simpler lentil and rice dish–sans pasta– topped with those signature crispy onions.

Fast-forward to today, when gluten-intolerance has rendered this traditional comfort-food staple off limits to people with intestines like mine, and when white rice and white pasta in the same dish is frowned upon by those even with perfectly functioning intestines.   Koshari was the perfect candidate for a makeover.

So imagine my delight to find a koshari recipe in my trusty Mayo Clinic cookbook hiding under the name “Lentils with Wild Rice and Crispy Onions.”  (Why would you call it that when it has a name as catchy as koshari?)  Since I’ve previously confessed to my beanaholic tendencies in a prior posting, it should come as no surprise that I was all about trying out a new way to dress up my weekday dinner staple.

OK, full disclosure up front: this recipe isn’t difficult at all, but quick it is not.  Put the wild rice on first before you start anything, as it will take somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour to make.  Cut all the onions and garlic at once, and I’d make extra crispy onions, because with such a tasty (and time-consuming garnish), you’d hate to have to skimp.  Have a good movie on TV in the background to help pass the time as you babysit the crisping onions, which will take a good 30 minutes.  I assure you that the dish is worth it: between the combination of textures, the tangy, picante sauce and the almost-sweet lentils, this is not your abuela’s rice and beans. The recipe says it serves 10, but I think that’s a huge stretch, especially if you’re using it as a main dish.  I’d say 5.

And unlike its starchy ancestor, this new-generation koshari is a high-fiber, whole-grain, complex-carbohydrate powerhouse. We’re talking satiety central, here, people.  Between the slow-digesting complex carbs, a hefty amount of fiber and  a solid amount of protein that comes from both the lentils and the wild rice, you won’t find yourself scavenging for a snack 2 hours after eating.  In fact, this dish is a perfect example of the utility of the right type of carbohydrate in helping with weight maintanence… so I hope my carb-phobic friends are taking notes!  Pair it with a green salad or a cup of broth spiked with some ground shiitake mushrooms, and you’ve got yourself a light but super-satisfying vegetarian meal fit for a pharaoh.

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Here’s some food for thought: Vitamin D was never intended to be a dietary vitamin.

Vitamin D is produced in the skin from precursors that are activated by the sun’s UVB rays, and travels throughout the body in a hormone-like fashion, doing its thing to help us replenish our bones with calcium and phosphorous after they are temporarily raided to maintain steady blood calcium levels.  If we spent more of our lives outdoors, in southern latitudes, sans sunscreen like our ancestors did, we wouldn’t need any Vitamin D in our diets to stay healthy.

Need more proof?  Humans have survived for millennia despite the fact that there are VERY few foods that are natural sources of Vitamin D.  (Milk and dairy products in the US are fortified by law in order to help prevent rickets, or poor bone mineralization that leads to bowed legs in children and soft, easily broken bones in adults). The only foods that naturally contain Vitamin D in any quantity that matters are fatty fish, liver and sun-dried shiitake mushrooms.  (Think its a coincidence that Scandanavian people, living at such northern latitudes, eat so much fatty fish?  Among the various types, herring, salmon, mackerel and sardines are best, in that order.) Most of the vitamin D that shows up in an American’s bloodstream comes from sunlight, fortified dairy products, and dietary supplements.

Unfortunately for many of us, we’re not getting enough vitamin D from the sun or from our diets to get our blood levels high enough to benefit from all of Vitamin D’s health-promoting functions. This is especially true for people who live North of 35-degrees latitude, who spend most of their time indoors, who only go out in the sun wearing sunscreen, who don’t drink 8-10 glasses of fortified milk per day, who are older than 50 or who have darker skin.  (Like I said, many of us.)  Researchers have discovered many other functions for Vitamin D in the body besides calcium absorption and bone mineralization, including protection against colon, breast, ovarian and prostate cancers, protection against autoimmune diseases, protection against hypertension and promoting a better-functioning immune system.  The blood levels we need to maintain in order to get the benefit of these functions is higher than previously thought.

In fact, those of us in the ‘biz are expecting the recommended daily value of Vitamin D to be increased from its current level of 5mcg (or 200 IU) for children and adults and 10mcg (400 IU) for adults over 50 in the near future.  And when I say increased, we’re not expecting a mere incremental increase.  We’re expecting it to go up 4-5x from the current amount, to about 20-25mcg or 800-1,000 IU.  How’s that for an insider tip?  Stay tuned to see how it all turns out, but if I’m right, then remember that you heard it here first.  

So in the spirit of being ahead of the trend, I thought we could talk about one of the few foods that does contain Vitamin D naturally: Sun-dried Shiitake mushrooms.  (Of course, most people are still likely to require a mixture of supplements, summer sunshine and fortified foods to meet their full needs, but it still doesn’t hurt to take advantage of a natural–and vegetarian–source when we have one.)

The low-down on Shiitakes

Shiitakes are native to Asia, where they have been used in Chinese medicine and cuisine for ages. These days, you can find them year-round in most supermarkets, though they’re still quite pricey. (My supermarket sells fresh ones for $9.99/lb).  The sun-dried version is both more economical AND high in Vitamin D.  If you have a local Asian market in your area, you’ll find “large” bags of dried shiitake mushrooms for $5-$10, and once you rehydrate them in warm water, you can cook with them as you would fresh mushrooms.  The sun-drying has the same effect on shiitakes as it has in our skin: it transforms inactive vitamin precursors into active vitamin D.  So you can’t expect to get any vitamin D from fresh shiitakes, though the they are still very healthful (as a good source of fiber, iron and Vitamin C) and delicious in their own right.

Like other mushrooms, shiitakes are low in carbohydrates and calories.  1 cup of rehydrated shiitakes (0.5 oz dry) has 50 calories and 9g of carbohydrates… of which an amazing 6g is fiber!  This same portion contains about 130 IU of vitamin D–or 30% more than a glass of fortified milk. Just to calibrate: 0.5 oz of sun-dried, sliced  shiitakes is about 3/4 cups dry and rehydrates to about 1 cup “fresh,” ready-to-cook (or eat) shiitakes.  Try substituting them for plain, button mushrooms in any recipe you have, or sauteing them in a smidge of olive oil with some garlic as a side dish.  (A little bit of fat is needed to absorb the vitamin D).  Alternatively, try this yummy recipe for Sesame Shiitake Noodles from Whole Foods.  Use 1 cup dried shiitakes, rehydrated, instead of the 6 oz fresh that the recipe calls for, and try 100% buckwheat soba noodles instead of the capellini pasta if you want to make it gluten-free.

If you grind that dry 0.5 oz portion into powder (a mini coffee grinder works great here), it will produce about 1/2 cup of mushroom powder that you can blend into just about anything you can think of.  As an experiment, we mixed 2 TBSP of the powder into 1 cup of warmed-up, store-bought organic chicken broth, waited 5 minutes, and tasted it.  The result was really great: the mushrooms added a hint of flavor and a subtle amount of texture without overpowering the broth.  We also added 2 TBSPs to dinner, which was a dish of cooked quinoa mixed with sauteed garlic, spinach and white beans.  We couldn’t even taste the mushrooms, so it was a sneaky way to beef up the nutritional value of our dinner.  Try keeping some ground sun-dried shiitakes in a tightly-sealed container in your pantry and get into the habit of adding it to soups, stews, cooked grain dishes or sauces.  It will add fiber and vitamin D to your food without affecting the flavor or texture dramatically.

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