And it was on that shopping trip that I encountered the season’s first crop of fiddlehead ferns in the produce section, all coiled up and looking to be taken home.

According to the Field Guide to Produce, Fiddlehead ferns are the edible young fronds of the Ostrich Fern, so named for their “resemblance to the scroll of a violin (or fiddle) head.”  While locally-foraged fiddleheads haven’t arrived at New York’s Greenmarkets quite yet, they should be coming soon.  You can’t miss it when they do, as their brief (~2 week) arrival sets off a frenzy among the fashionable locavore chefs.  A frenzy that has typically befuddled me as someone who suffers from Pteridophobia: a fear of ferns.

Mock me if you will, but I’ll have you know I am in very good company.  Sigmund Freud reportedly had the same fear.  It’s not so much the fern I’m afraid of as it is the fern’s skeevy underbelly, which is frequently dotted with rows of those repulsive black spores that give me the heebie jeebies something awful.  In my single days, when the occasional suitor would send flowers to me at work, I’d force someone to remove all of the spore-infested fern leaves before I’d allow the arrangement in my office.  My extreme aversion to ferns has, in the past, extended to fiddleheads by association, and prevented me from giving those unfurled little fern shoots a taste despite the insistence of people whose tastes I trust that they were, in fact, very delicious.

But as a self-designated cheerleader for the cause of trying new foods–particularly nutritious ones in season–I realized my fiddlehead avoidance rendered me a hypocrite.  And so, I bought a bag of them and decided it was time to turn over a new…leaf.

All about Fiddleheads

Know thine enemy: I set about my research to learn everything I could about the alien coils sitting in my fridge, hoping to prepare myself with a preview of what they might taste like, how I should cook them, and what foods they might pair best with.   So first, I consulted my handy dandy Flavor Bible (a very useful reference book if you’re cooking with a new ingredient), which listed the following “flavor affinities” under fiddlehead ferns:

fiddlehead ferns + butter + herbs + morel mushrooms + ramps

fiddlehead ferns + garlic + morel mushrooms + salmon

fiddlehead ferns + sesame oil and/or seeds + soy sauce

Hmmm.  So it seemed like fiddleheads played nicely with all of the foods I already loved.  How bad could they possibly be?

Indeed, the more I researched, the more disarmed I became.  The word on the street was that fiddleheads would taste sorta like asparagus (and in fact, could be prepared exactly as you would prepare asparagus), would pair well with my favorite morel mushrooms, (as in this recipe for Fiddlehead Fern and Morel salad) and would also taste great with garlic, ramps, spring peas, cheese, bacon/pancetta, hollandaise sauce or paired with Asian flavors, as in a stir fry.  So many options!

To select fiddleheads, the experts recommend choosing ones that are bright “jade” green, firm, tightly coiled and have only 1-2″ of stem past the coil. (Alternatively, you’ll need to trim longer stems prior to cooking).  It is advised to avoid fiddleheads covered with too many fuzzy brown scales (the so-called paper chaff), though small amounts of it can be rubbed off with your hands.  They are apparently best when eaten soon after harvest, but fiddlehead authorities concede that they can be stored under refrigeration for anywhere from 2-10 days (depending on when they were picked) if they’re tightly wrapped to prevent drying out.

To prepare fiddleheads, most sources recommend trimming the dark ends from their stems, soaking them in cold water to help clean them of any dirt/debris, and blanching them in boiling water to kill any bacteria hiding in those tight little coils (OK… that part created a mental image that set me back a little bit…) before proceeding to saute them with the accompanying ingredients of your choice. This seemed like prudent advise from a food safety perspective, so I thought I’d pass it along.  Conversely, you can just boil them in salted water until fully cooked, about 3-5 minutes.

Fiddlehead Nutrition Facts

In a sign that your tax dollars are being well spent, the USDA has actually analyzed the nutritional composition of fiddlehead ferns and published it in its free, online database.  That’s how I learned that a 3oz portion of raw fiddlehead ferns contains 34 calories, 5g of carbohydrate and 4.5g of protein (!).  What’s more, it contains about 43% of your daily Vitamin C needs, about 25% of a woman’s daily Vitamin A needs (20% of a man’s), and about 7% of the daily value for iron (1.3mg). Of course, it is not recommended that you eat them raw; for one, they’ll taste bitter, and too many raw fiddleheads could cause stomach upset.  And it’s not clear to me how much of that Vitamin C will in fact be leftover after the soaking and blanching.

The Verdict: What was I so scared of?

Sautee of fiddleheads, snap peas, ramps, shiitakes and thyme

My first foray into fiddleheads was a fantastically delicious one.  I settled on a simple and springy saute of ramps (a.k.a wild leeks, another early Spring cult favorite), sugar snap peas, shiitake mushrooms, blanched fiddleheads and thyme, and served it alongside a piece of grilled wild salmon and a simple dollop of polenta.

To make the veggies, I just sauteed sliced shiitakes in 1-2 tsps of butter (don’t judge me), with fresh-picked thyme from my herb garden and salt, until cooked.  Then I set those aside and, in the same pan with 1-2 tsp olive oil, sauteed the sugar snap peas and ramps together until the snap peas were bright green and the ramps were soft and wilty.  Right at the end, I added the blanched fiddleheads, seasoned the whole mess with salt,  and cooked for 1-2 minutes more.   Finally, I turned off the heat, mixed in the mushrooms, and served.

The fiddleheads were tender but not overly soft or mushy; the blanching did well to tame their reputed bitterness.  They didn’t have a super-strong flavor–certainly not as asparagusy as I had expected–but were pleasant and spring-like and quite enjoyable to eat.  I even went back for seconds.  Sigmund Freud would have been so very horrified.

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I have a confession: I’ve gone MIA these past two weeks for one, simple reason: my eating habits have been appallingly bad, and about the only things I’ve managed to actually “cook” at home (I’m using the term loosely) were some scrambled eggs and a tuna sandwich.  What with taxes due, exams to study for, a newly-scored community garden plot to plant, research papers to write and the occasional paycheck to earn, it’s been a busier-than-usual couple of weeks, and grocery shopping sort of fell by the wayside.

In this context, there were no recent cooking anecdotes to share, and I felt hypocritical standing up on my soapbox preaching the merits of healthy eating when most everything I’ve consumed has come from a restaurant, plastic wrapper or cardboard box.

Yes, even nutritionists fall off the wagon on occasion.

All of this recent urban foraging, however, has forced me to re-sharpen my gluten-hunting skills to ensure that an accidental crumb carelessly overlooked in haste wouldn’t take me down.  And in this process, I found the inspiration to write up a post that’s been building in my head for years: a list of unexpected sources of gluten whose camouflaged presence threaten the intestinal integrity of celiacs everywhere.

Who would have guessed THAT has gluten?!?

• Licorice: All licorice contains wheat.  Period.  That’s just how it’s made.  From your beloved Twizzlers to the fanciest imported products from Europe that spell liquorice with a “q.”
  

  Step. Away. From. The. Twizzler. (Licorice is a hidden source of wheat.)

• Wasabi peas: Seasoned, dried snacking peas often contain wheat flour as a coating to bind flavors to them, and 99% of the wasabi peas I’ve encountered are no exception.  If you come across wasabi peas (or any snacking peas) sold in bulk that are not labeled, assume they contain wheat.  Whole Foods’ private label brand is made without wheat, and if you live in New York, you can also find gluten-free Wasabi peas at the Nut Box, a chainlet with 3 locations throughout downtown NYC and Brooklyn.  As a bonus, they offer a natural Wasabi Pea version that is free from the artificial colors used to produce that preternaturally green color.

• Low-fat or fat-free salad dressings: Various wheat-derived ingredients are commonly used to thicken up reduced fat or fat-free salad dressings.  (Even some full-fat dressings may also contain gluten-contaminated products under the guise of “Modified Food Starch,” and unless they specify the starch is corn-derived rather than wheat-derived, better to be safe than sorry.)  There are plenty of mainstream brands that market gluten-free salad dressings of across the fat-content spectrum, so this is a case where you’ll just have to read labels or ask restaurant servers to check for you.

• French sauces: Most of the French “mother sauces”–and the sauces derived from them–are based on a roux, which is a combination of flour and butter.  As a result, you can pretty much guarantee that your local bistro’s version of these sauces will be, too.  Bechamel, Veloute, Sauce Espagnole, Sauce Bourguignonne, Demi-glace, Sauce aux Champignons, and most any sauce that’s colored on the white-to-brown spectrum and found on a French menu, will contain wheat.  Hollandaise and Bearnaise sauces should generally be safe from a celiac perspective (ask anyway), though their butter and egg-yolk provenance doesn’t exactly win them a nutritionist’s sauce-of-the-year award.  For more celiac-friendly (and healthier) French food, look for restaurants that focus on Provencal cuisine–it’s way less sauce-based, and is more Mediterranean in its influence.

• Kellogg’s Rice Krispies: Sweetened with barley malt, the ubiquitous cereal of your childhood is not safe for celiacs.  If you just can’t live without your mom’s homemade Rice Krispie treats, however, there are plenty of gluten-free crisped rice cereal brands that she can use as a stand-in: Erewhon and Nature’s Path are relatively easy to find nationally.

• (Some) Falafel: OK, so maybe fast-food falafel is a uniquely New York (or Middle East) thing, but if you’re ever visiting our fine city and have a hankering for some of New York’s finest balls of fried chickpea or fava bean mash, be sure to ask whether they put wheat flour in their falafel mixture.  I was appalled to discover that some places actually do (it’s falafel blasphemy!).  Maoz Vegetarian, an international falafel chain with several NYC locations, is currently one such offender, though word on the street is that the company is in the process of adjusting the recipe to make their falafels gluten-free for good.  Until such a time–and indeed, anytime you go out for Middle Eastern mezze of unknown origin– be sure to ask the falafel powers-that-be to verify whether they use wheat flour in their falafel balls.

Deceptively Gluten-free foods

Wheatgrass juice from wheatgrass that's been cut well-above the seed should be perfectly gluten-free

Lest the list above bum you out, I decided to end this entry on a more optimistic note.  Hence, the below list of things you might think have gluten, but actually don’t.

• Wheatgrass (and Barley grass) juice: Yes, wheatgrass is indeed the young version of wheat, sprouted from a gluten-containing seed (in this case, the wheatberry).  But the since gluten is a storage protein, it’s only found in the storage part of the plant: the seed.  The young, green grass that sprouts from it is gluten-free and safe for celiacs.  Having said that, one can never be too careful: if you’re ordering a wheatgrass shot at a local juice bar, make sure to let them know to be extra careful not to let any seeds get into your grass.  (It’s unlikely they will, and most places cut the grass before your eyes–and cut it a good inch or so above the root at that. Since the seeds are pretty well-entrenched in the dirt, it’s not likely they’ll make their way into your drink.)  This also explains why some of the “green” meal replacement bars that contain wheatgrass or barleygrass powder, and some frozen wheatgrass juice products, are able to claim to be gluten-free.  Since you’re not there to see how the ingredients are handled, however, if you do buy a commerically-processed product containing wheatgrass, be sure to look for a labeling claim that certifies it as gluten free through ELISA testing or some other 3rd-party agency.

• Buckwheat: I’ve posted previously about buckwheat, whose nutritious grain-like seeds bear no relation to actual wheat.   When eating out, you’re most likely to encounter buckwheat in the form of buckwheat pancakes, buckwheat crepes (crepes de sarrasin) or Japanese soba noodles.  In all of these cases, you’ll need to verify with the server that the buckwheat flour isn’t also mixed with regular wheat flour.  Nine times out of 10 it will be, but every so often, I’ve gotten lucky and found a 100% buckwheat crepe or soba noodle.

• Glutinous rice:  If you’ve seen this on the ingredient list of an Asian rice or rice-derived product (Mochi comes to mind), rest assured that in this context, “glutinous” is a descriptive term meant to refer to its glue-like (sticky) texture.  It does not suggest the presence of gluten.  Like all rice, glutinous rice is gluten-free and safe for celiacs.

Got any additions to the above lists or burning questions about a controversial food?  Leave a comment to let me know!

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Introducing the Burgeriest (soy-free, gluten-free, vegan) homemade Veggie Burger

For some time, friends and readers have been asking me to share a recipe for a good, easy to make, homemade veggie burger.  And so my New Year’s Resolution this year was to make good on my promises to do so. (Besides, it’s a heck of a lot easier than losing weight.)

As it turns out, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the available options.  Most commercial offerings have gluten or soy; ingredients which many people avoid by choice or necessity.  And most recipes for homemade versions are incredibly time-consuming, multi-step ordeals; I still have nightmares about the 2-hour Shutter’s veggie burger project I took on two summers ago that involved cooking brown rice from scratch (45 minutes), cooking beets from scratch (1 hour), and mixing them with a laundry list of hard-to-find-GF-versions-of  pantry items* to produce a delicious but exhausting veggie burger.  Then there was that Martha Stewart Chickpea burger that tasted suspiciously similar to falafel.  (Tasty…but if I had wanted falafel, I would have just made falafel…).  I had all but given up on finding a tasty, easy homemade burgery veggie burger until the most recent article in a recent New York Times series on the safety (or lack thereof) of ground beef sold in America provided the second wind I needed to find a delicious, easy, healthful ground beefless recipe for my dear readers to make at home.

Resolved: Eat Less Red Meat in 2010

Even if you’re not a vegetarian, swapping out a beefy burger for a meatless one every so often will do you good– and help you make good on those New Year’s Resolutions to start eating more healthily.  In a landmark study of over 550,000 people aged 50-71 years (that’s crazy huge, by the way) by Sinha et al published in March, 2009 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers followed subjects for 10 years to determine how various dietary factors contributed to mortality. They controlled for all sorts of factors, including race, smoking, alcohol use, weight, exercise habits, vitamin use and multiple dietary habits.  And they found that men and women who ate more red meat were  31% and 36%, respectively, more likely to die for any reason during the 10 year period when compared to people to ate the least red meat. Cancer was the leading cause of mortality, followed by cardiovascular disease.  On average, the group with the lowest red meat consumption ate only about 1/3 of an ounce per 1,000 calories in their diet, compared with the highest meat consumption group, which ate about 2.5 oz red meat per 1,000 calories in their diet.  In other words, in a typical 2,000 calorie diet, the lowest-risk group ate less than 1 oz red meat per day on average (~4.5 oz per week), versus the highest risk group who ate about 5oz per day (~17 oz per week).  The results were statistically significant for trend, meaning that even reducing red meat consumption somewhat from the highest level (without going as low as the lowest-intake level) was still associated with a reduced risk of death.

The bottom line: swapping out one average beef burger a week with a meatless version brings you 3-6oz closer to the group whose dietary habits have been associated with the lowest risk of death within 10 years. And what better New Year’s Resolution than to live past New Year’s 2020?

The Best Homemade Veggie Burger Recipe

And so, after countless veggie burger experiments, spanning several years and multiple genres, I’m pleased to point you in the direction of Mollie Katzen’s Lentil-Walnut Burger. I know what you’re thinking when you hear “lentil-walnut.”  You’re thinking about long-

Two Lentil Walnut burgers on a (gluten-free) bun

haired tree huggers.  70′s style health food stores that smell like vitamins. Hemp, bean sprouts and Birkenstocks.   But do try to keep an open mind.  Mollie loves food, and she knows food.  As such, this burger tastes nothing of lentils or walnuts; it’s greater than the sum of its parts.  The batter has a similar texture and appearance to ground beef–it looks like a beef burger when cooking and when cooked.  Not in the creepy Boca Burger way, but in a ‘it definitely feels burgery rather than bean-pattyish’ way.   The burgers have that same savory, umami flavor profile of a beef burger–delivered by the cider vinegar and mushrooms?–rather than the more bean-and-vegetably flavor typical of a veggie burger.  And you can make the whole batter in the time it takes to cook lentils: 30 minutes flat.  (If I may offer a tip: mash the cooked lentils with your hands–squeeze ‘em real good until they’re totally mush.  It helps make a very coherent batter.) So give this tie-dyed, hippie burger a chance, will you?

To make Mollie’s recipe gluten-free you have several options instead of the bread crumbs/wheat germ/oats she calls for:

1. Use gluten free breadcrumbs, like Gillian’s, Hol-Grain, or Glutino
2. Use gluten-free oats, like Bob’s Red Mill
3. Use the Quinoa Flakes you have leftover from making my gluten-free Quatzoh Balls (of course this will make the recipe more hippie than it is already)
   
4. Make your own gluten-free breadcrumbs by toasting your favorite frozen gluten-free waffle and tossing it in a food processor (Click here for instructions from the clever gluten-free goddess who came up with this nifty idea

Approximate nutrition info per burger (assumes each recipe makes 6 burgers and you use 1 TBSP of oil to cook the burgers in a non-stick pan.  Excludes bun.):  250 calories, 29g carbohydrate–of which 10 huge grams are fiber (so, a net of 19g of carbohydrate–or one and a half diabetic exchanges), 11g protein, 12g (heart-healthy, unsaturated) fat, and 3.8mg iron (~20% of the daily value of 18mg).  Serve with ketchup and a slice of tomato to help absorb the iron from the beans and spinach.

** If I haven’t scared you away from the Shutter’s recipe and you’re up for the challenge, you can substitute Wheat-free Tamari sauce for the soy sauce.  Premier Japan makes a gluten-free Hoisin sauce.  And use any of the bread-crumb-replacement strategies listed above in place of the oat bran or wheat germ she calls for.  And for goodness sake, use canned beets instead of roasting your own fresh ones as I foolishly did and you can redeem that extra hour of your life to play Rhythm Kung Fu on the Wii Fit Plus you got for Christmas.

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Below is my wish list of products I wish you’d develop and market.  Instead of filling supermarket shelves with more crap we don’t need, won’t you please make any of these useful products and put them in our collective stockings?

Readers: I hereby invite you to add to this wish-list by submitting your comments below!

• Lactose-free, (organic) cow’s milk yogurt:  The #1 search term that brings people to my blog, hands down, is “lactose-free yogurt.”  There is a huge need for it in the marketplace, and the only company that had been marketing such a product, True Yogurt, has recently disappeared from supermarket shelves due to the loss of their production facilities.  I hope they will re-appear in the not-too-distant future, but their absence calls attention to this massive gap in the over-assorted yogurt aisle.  Instead of launching more so-called “functional yogurts” with bogus, unsubstantiated health claims about immunity, heart health and digestive health, won’t someone just make a plain ol’ lactose-free cow’s milk yogurt? Not a highly-processed soy yogurt.   Not a highly-processed rice milk yogurt.  Just a natural, just-sweet-enough yogurt made with lowfat lactose-free milk and no processed crap, preferably made with hormone-free, organic milk.  At the risk of being called greedy, I’d order up a lactose-free Greek Yogurt variety, too.

• Individual packets of wheat-free Tamari sauce: If these babies existed, I’d keep them in my purse (just like my mom keeps Sweet & Low in her wallet) and feel at liberty to join my friends for sushi whenever I pleased.   If they were reduced sodium, all the better.  Of course, if enlightened Asian restaurants across the country started offering these on the table for us wheat-free customers, that’d be swell, too.

• Mini cans of LITE coconut milk:  A few food companies have finally caught on that very few of us ever use a 14.5 oz can of coconut milk at a time, and are tired of seeing the leftovers grow moldy in the fridge within a few days.  The resulting 5.6 oz can is a welcome addition to the supermarket, and given the price premium per ounce that marketers are charging, would seem to be a profitable item for manufacturers as well.  Unfortunately, these baby cans are as yet only available in full-fat coconut milk, which I am loathe to use for its whopping saturated fat and calorie content.  Won’t someone please start selling LITE coconut milk in the 5.6oz can?

• Whole grain, gluten-free cereal fortified with iron, B12 and folic acid:  While the universe of gluten-free cereals is slowly growing, the universe of healthy gluten-free cereals made with whole grains and containing fiber is not.  While I appreciate the gesture that Chex made with their gluten-free varieties of corn, rice, honey nut and cinnamon Chex cereals, these products contain a maximum of 1g fiber per serving–and some varieties have none at all.  I think you can do better, General Mills.  Take a page out of the Puffins playbook: Barbara’s Bakery managed to squeeze a more respectable 3g of fiber into their new gluten-free Multigrain Puffins cereal from whole grain sources and they fortified it with Iron, Vitamin D and calcium to boot… all of which are nutrients that people consuming a plant-based diet have a hard time getting enough of.  If they had thrown in some B12, it would have been perfection…

• Oat Matzoh: Granted, matzoh is a bit of a niche product, purchased by Jews (and the closeted non-Jewish Matzoh fans whose love for this constipation-inducing, bland, aptly-nicknamed “bread of affliction” continues to puzzle me), once a year during Passover.  Each year, the presumably static matzoh market is further segmented by new and fashionable varieties to address imagined consumer need states: whole wheat matzoh, “thin tea matzoh” (perhaps for those Jews expecting to have High Tea with the Queen of England during Passover?), spelt matzoh, unsalted matzoh, egg matzoh, yolk-free egg matzoh (for lovers of Egg Matzoh with high-cholesterol?).  And yet, not one gluten-free Matzoh variety is available for a population with higher than average incidence rates of Celiac disease.  (Sounds like someone in marketing has not been doing their homework…)  Last year, my mom hunted down a box of gluten-free Oat Matzoh from England for me.  They cost her $30 for an 8 oz box whose ingredient label read: “Oat flour, water.”  At $60 a pound, these matzohs produced a week’s worth of matzoh brie for breakfast that cost about the same as an equivalent amount of Kobe beef.  Surely, an American company could produce an equivalent product locally to meet the demands of the wheat-free crowd?

• Heirloom, heritage and novel varieties of fruits and vegetables: Overwhelming–and arguably unnecessary– variety dominate the modern supermarket in all aisles except one: the produce aisle.  Why is it that I can get 20 different types of Colgate toothpaste in most supermarkets, but only 3 types of lettuce?  Or just 4 types of apple?  Some scary stats to ponder from the Sustainable Table:
  • Almost 96% of the commercial vegetable varieties available in 1903 are now extinct
  • Twelve plant crops account for more than 3/4 of the food consumed in the world, and just three–rice, wheat and maize–are relied on for more than half of the world’s food.

The textbook rationale for this unacceptable state of affairs is that marketers can only make money from selling “value added” (read: processed) foods, and that produce is a commodity with thin margins.  Perhaps this is true if you are producing and selling commoditized varieties of produce, like generic, tasteless heads of iceberg lettuce for which consumers are understandably unwilling to pay a premium.  But those few growers who have dared to introduce a unique varietal of fruit or vegetable that is differentiated on the basis of its awesome flavor (like Honeycrisp apples, for example) have demonstrated that there are price premiums to achieve and profit to be made even in the produce aisle. (Mind you: I’m not talking genetically-modified species here.)  News flash, produce managers and agribusiness mongers: you can actually make money while restoring some of the planet’s biodiversity and enriching our collective lives by reaching back into the vast archive of plant species that once roamed the earth and re-introducing the delicious-est ones back into our diets.

Thank you in advance, Santa, for considering my requests above and passing them along to the naughty food marketers who seek to make your “nice” list by next Christmas.

Love, Tamara

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Perhaps you’ve overheard someone order “ABC” wine (that’s code for “Anything But Chardonnay”), and have been shamed into eschewing this varietal of wine.  Or perhaps you’ve tasted enough mediocre chardonnays at weddings to have categorized the entire varietal as a sort-of generic catering-hall white.  Ariella explains that Chardonnay’s current reputation results from the fact that chardonnay grapes  themselves are not aromatic per se, so the flavor of the wine depends more on a winemaker’s skill than the characteristics of the grape itself.  In this way, chardonnay is like the tofu of the grape world: it’s sort of plain when cooked by itself, but it takes on the flavor of whatever you “cook” it with.  Traditionally, California winemakers have chosen to flavor their Chardonnays by fermenting them in brand-spanking new, toasted oak barrels, which impart a strong vanilla smokiness to the wine that totally overwhelms the fruit.  The result is a heavy wine that isn’t particularly “sippable” on its own during cocktail hour.  Rather, it needs heavier foods to stand up to it: think richer, meatier deep sea fish.  Unfortunately, many such fish are of the overfished–and therefore environmentally unsustainable– variety (think Chilean Sea Bass and Bluefin Tuna).

So what to pair with those lighter, more sustainably-caught fish, you might ask? 

Our resident sommelier recommends you give a New York State chardonnay a try.

All across the state, from Long Island to the Finger Lakes, winemakers have been producing un-oaked chardonnays fermented in stainless steel tanks (or lesser-oaked chardonnays, in which only a small portion of oaked wine is mixed into a batch of unoaked wine to produce a more balanced flavor).  The result is new wave of “fruit-forward” chardonnays (don’t you love it when sommeliers say things like that?) that are crisp and bright and summery with apple-y and stone fruit flavors.  These light and lovely wines are way more versatile and sippable, and pair divinely with sustainable fish at the low end of the food chain: think grilled fresh sardines, clams and mussels.

Interested in trying some of New York’s Finest?  Ariella recommends Channing Daughters 2007 Scuttle Hole chardonnay (~$16/bottle), which she likes for its sweet, peachy quality that tastes like summer in a bottle.  Try pairing it with any seafood, or spicy foods of all varieties… like Thai or Vietnamese.  She also likes Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Salmon Run (2007) chardonnay from the Finger Lakes region, which has crisp green apple and citrusy notes for about $10/bottle.  The wine is named in honor of the wild salmon that live in nearby Keuka Lake and pairs well with briny shellfish or a happy wild fish like salmon, wild striped bass or brook trout.

Of course, all this talk about white wine begs the question as to whether it’s indeed healthy to drink wine at all?

Perhaps you’ve heard that red wine is heart healthy… and healthier for you than white wine, at that.  Well, although it’s true that red wine contains higher levels of a phytochemical called resveratrol that has been associated with cardiovascular health benefits, there isn’t much scientific data that compares health outcomes of red wine drinkers to white wine drinkers. Therefore, it’s not clear that red is definitively “healthier” than white… and there’s certainly no evidence that passing up a heavy, spicy red in favor of a cold, fruity glass of chardonnay on a hot summer night is somehow going to put you at some sort of disadvantage health-wise.  For me personally, supporting small, local NY State wineries does my heart quite good, thank you very much.

Now as for whether to drink at all, the best answer researchers have is the same, vague party line: *if* you choose to drink any alcohol at all, moderation appears to be associated with the best health outcomes. As a reminder, I’ll re-state what I’ve said before.. and apologize in advance for being a buzz-kill:  

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! While it seems that red wine may possibly afford an even better benefit, any type of alcohol should do the trick. If you’re drinking more than this amount, you may want to consider cutting down.  
2. Bear in mind that “one drink” is not necessarily one glass of wine as poured by your neighborhood bartender in a monster-sized 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.
3. If you don’t drink at all now, I wouldn’t recommend taking it up for ‘health reasons,’ as there are plenty of ‘health reasons’ not to drink, too.  Even moderate drinking appears to increase the risk for breast cancer in women, and regular drinking can aggravate high blood pressure and increase your triglyceride levels, both of which are actually risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Got a wine pairing question for our resident sommelier?  Looking for a special recommendation?  Post a comment on this post for Ariella Duker, Sommelier-at-Large, and she’ll respond to your every wine query!

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One of the many guest appearances Ratatouille made on our honeymoon; here, as a base for seared fish

I’m back from my magical trip to Provence, and am delighted to report that the South of France turned out to be a surprisingly GF-friendly place to eat! In fact, it was SO much easier for me to eat out at restaurants there than it is for me here in New York.

Unlike the cuisine that dominates in Paris and in most Parisian-style French bistros in the US, the regional Provencal cuisine is NOT based on the classic French ‘mother sauces’ that contain a butter and flour roux as their thickening agent. Instead, Provencal cuisine employs flour-free vegetable,  fish and/or cream-based sauces such as tomato coulis, anchoïade (anchovy & garlic sauce), and various vegetable cream sauces (mushroom, red peppers…) to accent their vegetable, fish and meat dishes.  Gluten-free vegetable tapenades and terrines (olive, artichoke, red pepper, eggplant…) are also widely served as flavorful accents to a meal,  and you’re as likely to see them served with bread as you are with an omelet or a piece of fish.  After having multiple restauarant owners walk me through their menus item by item to tell me what was safe for me to eat and what wasn’t, I came to conclude that the Provencal cuisine is much more “honest” than is American cuisine; in other words, there tended to only be gluten in foods that one would expect to find gluten in, and I did not encounter any hidden gluten in unexpected places. The only foods that were off limits to me on menus were pastas (obviously) and the toasted croutons served alongside the bouilliabase (obviously).  As a result, I was able to easily gain the requisite weight one would expect to gain on a proper French Honeymoon.  Now back the gym…

The other thing so wonderful and different about eating in Provence in July was the monopoly that locally-grown, in-season vegetables had on the region’s menus.  There was not a head of broccoli or cauliflower in

Another ratatouille sighting, this time as a heaping side dish served at a prix fixe meal to hundreds of revelers at the Vacqueyras Wine Festival

sight at any market or in any restauarant. Instead, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants and artichokes dominated the local markets and the restauarant menus. It struck me that starting around late July through August, we face a similar glut of tomatoes and zucchini here in the northeast; our gardens produce more than we can eat, the farmers’ markets beckon with stacks of inexpensive, sweet heirloom tomatoes that just beg to be bought by the pound… and we collectively fantasize about learning how to can our own veggies at home to capture the fleeting summer bounty and stretch it out beyond its short, natural life.

So what do the French do with their embarassing riches of the world’s most flavorful tomatoes, zucchini and eggplants?

They make Ratatouille.

Ratatouille is a dish that originated in Provence, and it appeared on our plates in some incarnation at outdoor festivals and Michelin-starred restaurants alike.  We had it served to us warm and cold.  We had versions with peppers and without peppers.  We had it offered up as a standalone side dish to fish or chicken and as a filling for omelets and crepes.  Each chef put their own spin on it, and each version we tasted was equally delicious.  It’s hardly a surprise, then, that I chose it as the topic for my first post-vacation blog post.

This recipe for Ratatouille comes from a cookbook I bought while traveling called When Our Grandmothers Cooked in Provence, by Frédérique Féraud-Espérandieu.  (Based on the number accent marks in her name, I decided she must be a huge authority on all things French, so I chose her cookbook above the others.)  Make up a big old batch, freeze some, keep some in the fridge, and serve it for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner, take it to potluck picnics, eat it hot or cold and don’t feel guilty about buying that enormous bag of tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market next month.

Recipe: Somebody’s French Grandmother’s Ratatouille

Serves 6

Olive oil

4 (small) eggplants (or 2 medium-sized ones), peeled and diced

4 (small-medium) zucchinis, diced

4 green peppers, seeded and cut into strips

2 lbs ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and quartered

2 (large) onions, sliced

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 bay leaf

1 pinch ground thyme

A few chopped basil leaves (to your own taste)

2 twigs of fresh tarragon

3-4 pinches minced parsley

Salt & pepper

Optional: a handful of pitted green olives (the author recommends “Picholine” variety if you can find them; they’re a firm, immature type of green olive)

Directions:

Heat 3 TBSP olive oil in a large saute pan over medium/high heat.

Saute zucchini until golden.  Season with salt & pepper, remove from heat and drain. Set aside.

Using same pan, repeat the same process for the eggplant until brown.

Repeat the same process for the peppers (you can use less oil here…)

Finally, sweat the onion in 3 TBSP of olive oil, add the tomatoes, garlic, thyme, basil, bay leaf and tarragon.  Cook uncovered and leave this “coulis” to reduce.

Add all of the cooked vegetables back into the with the saucepan with the coulis, add the olives if you wish, stir  until blended, and let simmer on a very low heat for an additional 15 minutes.

Check the seasoning and adjust to taste.

Garnish with the chopped parsley.

Because it would be un-French of me to calculate the precise nutrition info of this dish, suffice it to say that even if you use the total of 12 (!) TBSP of olive oil that the recipe calls for, that makes for 2 TBSP per person, or about 240 calories.  The vegetables are so low calorie that each serving will still only come in at around the 300 calorie range, so enjoy it like the French do: avec pleasure and sans guilt.

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