I’ve posted my opinion on this issue many times. It’s time for all of us to take a little stand.
Here’s a Petition asking the FDA to take a stand on requiring proper GMO labeling. Click it, sign it, and share it. Whether or not we choose to eat things that are or contain GMOs ain’t to be up to each and every one of us, period.
Frankly, I sure as hell don’t trust big business to do it for me, or of their own volition. Let’s make ’em accountable, gang.
Summer cocktails mean taking advantage of the seasons bounty in a glass, or maybe in a peel; more on that later. As fruit and veggies ripen, so do your opportunities for celebrating with a little something. Whether that’s a Bloody Mary made with fresh tomatoes, or a loaded watermelon, there a bunch of things for you to try.
Fruit powered alcoholic drinks a a natural pairing; their light, refreshing taste is perfect for quenching a thirst on a hot day. Fruit purées and granitas are a an easy way to get the focused, pure taste of your favorite fruits into a drink. Puréeing fruit is as easy as rinsing, heading, and skinning as necessary, then toss your bounty into a blender and let ‘er rip. A quick trip through a single mesh strainer will finish the job. Use puréed fruit quickly; it will oxidize and spoil. For granitas, type granita into the search box in the upper right corner of your screen. You’ll find serval recipes, and from those, you can build your own for just about any fruit you like. Freeze the granita in ice cube trays and then toss them into a cocktail, (gin or vodka and tonic, or a glass of sparkling wine). The granita will keep the drink cold, and slowly release the fruit into your drink as you enjoy.
Loaded fruit is a fun and very effective way to, well, enjoy fruit and booze, of course! The easiest version is a loaded watermelon. Buy a nice big, firm one, and cut a roughly 2″ hole in the top, angling your knife so the plug you cut will sit snugly back in without disappearing. Next, extract enough flesh to fit. The neck of a booze bottle, plus a bit of reservoir room. Depending on the size of the melon, add anywhere from a pint to a fifth of your favorite booze; good vodka, rum, cachaça, bourbon or gin all go great. Remove the plug and carefully insert the neck of your booze bottle. Don’t push the rate, let the melon absorb as it wants to; you may end up refrigerating the melon and the inverted bottle. Once the melon has absorbed all the booze, put the plug back and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, and overnight is even better. When you’re ready for it, just cut slices as you normally would and let the adults have a blast. Slices of that melon set on the edge of a glass of cold white wine are great too. You can load any citrus fruit or melon, but the smaller ones will need an injector to do the deed; the syringes and big needles made for injecting marinade into meat will work great. A bunch of sweet, juicy oranges loaded with añejo tequila, grapes with champagne, strawberries with premium rum, dipped in chocolate – Your imagination is the limit.
Finally, try infusing your favorite booze with something new to you as a combination. Take just the colored peel, (no white pith), from your favorite citrus fruit, or clean and slice fresh berries, fresh whole peppercorns, cucumber, sweet onion, cilantro, celery, radish, or anything else you love. Cover them with 100 proof vodka, rum, or bourbon and place them in an airtight glass jar. Shake the jar a couple times a day for about a week or so. Open it up and give a sniff; the essence of your favorite fruit has now infused that booze. Whatever you make with it will taste fresher and more vibrant than any artificially done or expensive flavored booze out there. Just that infused booze with a squirt of simple syrup, a shot of bitters and lots of ice is as good as it gets on a hot day.
Saluté!
Far and away, the questions I hear most often when it comes to cooking with milled corn products are these;
‘What’s the difference between corn meal and corn flour’,
‘Can I make the same recipe with either,’
‘What’s the difference between corn meal and grits, or polenta,’
‘What’s the difference between white and yellow corn meal or flour,’
‘What’s the difference between corn flour and Masa?’
The answer to the first is, the degree of milling – meal is coarser than flour, and to further confuse things, there is quite a bit of variety of meals out there. Steel ground yellow cornmeal, probably the most common variant found in the U.S., has the husk and germ of the corn kernel almost completely removed. As such, it’s kind of the equivalent of bleached, enriched wheat flour; a lot of the stuff that is good for you, along with a chunk of the taste, has been removed. Stone-ground cornmeal retains some of the hull and germ, and as such also has better flavor and nutritional properties. It is more perishable, but will store longer if refrigerated. White cornmeal, made from white corn, and also can be found in steel ground or stone ground variants.
The answer to the second is, technically, I guess you could, but you wouldn’t get the same results, and you probably wouldn’t like one of the variants. Recipes designed for meal want a different texture than those made with flour; think cornbread versus a biscuit, and you get the gist.
The answer to the third is, maybe nothing, but if there is a difference, it’s a pretty fine point of variance in the coarseness of milling. Google the difference between grits and polenta and you’ll see a firestorm of opinion akin to asking ‘What is real chili?’ I have the solution for you; avoid the controversy and go find a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Corn Grits, also know as Polenta. Works great for both; debate over…
The answer to the fourth is, it depends on who you ask. Some will tell you that the only difference between the two is the the color; that may or may not be true, as there is more than one variety used for making the things we eat. In any case, the bottom line is that they are absolutely interchangeable in recipes.
And finally, for question five, corn flour and masa harina are quite different preparations of corn. Masa harina is corn flour that is ground from dried hominy. White, yellow, or blue corn is used for making hominy, also known as posole or pozole. The corn is boiled in a solution containing powdered lime, then washed, dried, and ground to form masa harina. Masa is the only thing to use for making corn tortillas and tamales, far as I’m concerned. Untreated corn flour is basically fine-ground cornmeal. I use it in recipes where I want corn flavor without the gritty texture of corn meal. Corn flour contains no gluten, so makes a good substitute for wheat flours in pan and short bread and cake recipes, though the proportions may need a bit of tweaking to get just right. If you sub corn flour for wheat flour in a rising bread or cake recipe, you need to add vital wheat gluten, since corn has none.
While we’re describing the various things corn is made into, let’s not forget cornstarch. Cornstarch is obtained from the white heart of the corn kernel. It’s a tasteless, fine powder that is very useful as a thickener; it boasts twice the thickening power of wheat or corn flour. It’s best to stir cornstarch into water first before it is added to other foods, so that it can be incorporated without getting lumpy; use enough water to make a loose slurry as opposed to a paste when you mix it. One thing to note if you’re on the other side of the pond; cornstarch is referred to as corn flour in England.
There is a broad assumption that white corn meal is preferred in the South and yellow is preferred in Texas and the rest of the U.S. While that statement certainly was true in the past, it’s not so valid as it used to be. The population base that made that a fact has aged and died, frankly, and the following waves are more likely to experiment, mix, and match.
All your meals, flours, and masa should always be relatively fresh. Stored in a cool, dry place in an airtight container, you can expect around 6 months of use from them.
As mentioned above, there are several varieties of corn used for making the stuff we eat and cook with. Here’s a brief primer that will help you get a better grasp on things. This is a fairly rudimentary outline. For many decades, corn in America, like beer and cheese, was reduced to a few basic varieties; that trend has changed radically in the 21st Century. Heirloom varieties have exploded in the last 15 years; this has tumbled out to the folks growing their own, as well as to small cottage industries. As such, varieties have expanded and reemerged in unprecedented numbers. This is most definitely a good thing.
Dent (Zea mays indenata)
Dent or Field corn may be either white or yellow, and is predominantly used for processed foods, industrial products, and as livestock feed often used as livestock feed. No-name, really cheap corn meal or flour may be made from this variety. Dent kernels become notably indented at maturity, hence the name for the variety.
Flint (Zea mays indurata)
Flint or Indian corn is used for similar purposes as dent corn, as well as for decoration come fall. This variety is distinguished by a hard outer shell and kernels with a wide range of colors. When you see blue, red, or white flours, meals, chips and tortillas, you’re looking at flint corn. The variety is named for it’s hard or ‘flinty’ exterior.
Sweet (Zea saccharata or Zea rugosa)
Sweet corn is the variety we eat as corn on the cob. It is also canned and frozen. Seldom used for feed or flour, this variety is named for its higher sugar content, (around 10%, versus maybe 4% for Field corn). THE thing to remember is that roughly half the available sugars in sweet corn degrade notably within 24 hours of picking; if ever there was a thing you wanted to get locally from a good CSA, sweet corn is it.
Flour (Zea mays amylacea)
Flour corn has a soft, starchy kernel that lends itself well to grinding, so it is the primary variety used by companies in the U.S. to make meal and flour. Flour corn is primarily white, although it can be grown in other colors, including yellow, red, and blue. One of the oldest varieties, flour corn was grown by Native Americans before the rest of us showed up here.
Popcorn (Zea mays everta)
Popcorn is a variant of flint corn, with a soft starchy center surrounded by a very hard exterior shell. When heated, the natural moisture inside the kernel quickly turns to steam and builds up enough pressure for the kernel to explode, exposing the white starchy mass we like to graze on. All types of corn will pop to some degree, but they won’t necessarily have enough starch to turn inside out, or an outside layer that will create enough pressure to explode. One of the oldest forms of corn, evidence of popcorn over 5,500 hundred years old has been found in New Mexico.
OK, so enough learnin’, lets talk about what you should have in your pantry if you want to build corn recipes. The bottom line is that corn flours and meals are cheap and readily available, so you should aim for stocking the same stuff I do. Remember that quality counts; opt for fresh and local whenever you can and you’ll never go wrong. I stock white corn flour, masa, and white and yellow corn meal, and grits/polenta.
Alright, now we’re ready to cook. Here’re my go-to recipes for corn bread, tortillas, grits, and polenta.
Urb’s Corn Bread
1 1/2 Cups Yellow Corn Meal
1/2 Cup Corn Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Cup Whole Milk (or, in order of rising decadence, Half & Half or Buttermilk)
1 Egg
4 Tablespoons Lard (Unsalted Butter is fine)
1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
Optional Additions:
Add 1/2 Cup extra sharp Cheddar or Pepper Jack cheese.
Add 1 – 3 seeded, cored and diced Jalapeño chiles.
1 ear of corn on the cob, cut down to kernels
Preheat oven to 400° F
Pour cornmeal into a bowl and add the milk; mix well and allow to sit for 15 minutes. This is a biggy in terms of making moist cornbread.
Mix remaining dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Melt the fat, then combine all ingredients and mix by hand to a nice, even batter consistency.
Place the pan(s) you’ll do the bread in into the oven, with a small dot of fat in each pan, (Or a tablespoon full if using a single pan).
When the fat is melted and sizzling, remove the pan, pour in the batter and return to the oven.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown.
Serve Hot with, as Julia Child would say, ‘lots and lots of butter!’
Corn Tortillas
2 Cups Masa Harina
1.25 to 1.50 Cups hot Water
In a mixing bowl, combine the Masa and water by hand and blend until you get a nice, consistent dough that does not stick to your hands. You don’t want the dough too dry, either; shoot for a dough that holds together, isn’t sticky, but feels moist to the hand.
Roll the dough into 12 equal balls and allow to sit for about 10 minutes.
Whether you use a pin or a press, cut a gallon plastic storage bag into two equal sheets and place a ball of dough between them, then press or roll to roughly 6″ around.
In your pan or comal over medium high heat, cook the tortillas until you see that nice brown blistering form on each side. Each side will get 30 to 60 seconds of cooking time.
Stack your finished wrapped tortillas on a warmed plate under a clean towel to keep them warm.
Grits
1/2 Cup Bob’s Red Mill Grits
1/2 Cup whole Milk, (Half & Half, Whole Cream, and Buttermilk all work even better)
1 3/4 Cups Water
3/4 teaspoon Sea Salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground Pepper
Options:
1/4 Cup grated Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese
2 Slices crisp cooked, thick cut bacon, chopped
In a saucepan over medium high heat, combine milk, water, salt, and pepper and bring to a rolling boil.
Shake grits into the center of the pan, stirring constantly to avoid lumps.
As soon as all the grits are incorporated, reduce heat to low and cover. You want your grits to cook at a low simmer, so keep an eye on that and adjust heat as needed.
You’re going to cook your grits for 20 minutes, but set a timer for 5 minutes and stir the grits, (So, you’re going to stir every 5 minutes for a total of 20 minutes).
After 20 minutes, taste your grits; if they’re not tender enough, cook for another 10 minutes, stirring after 5 minutes.
If you’re adding cheese and bacon, you can toss it in for the last 5 minutes of cooking, or offer it at the table with butter.
Leftover Grits?
Spread grits about an inch thick in a glass baking pan or oven proof skillet and refrigerate until firm to the touch.
Cut grits into roughly 4″ squares, season lightly with salt and pepper, then dust both sides with Wondra flour.
Fry in 2 ounces of butter and 1 ounce light vegetable oil, turning once, until golden brown. Served with red eye gravy, this is the bees knees.
Red Eye Gravy (Serves 2)
1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
1 smoked ham steak, (About 1/2 Pound)
1 1/2 Cups brewed Coffee
1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground Pepper
1-2 shots Tabasco Sauce
In a cast iron skillet over medium high heat, heat oil until shimmering.
Fry ham steak until nicely browned, remove to a warm oven.
Deglaze skillet with the coffee, stirring to incorporate all the juices and little bits of ham stuck to the pan. Season with salt and pepper
Bring liquid up to a high simmer and cook until gravy reduced by 1/3 and nicely coats a spoon.
Serve with grit cake, game and a over medium egg for a true little slice of breakfast heaven.
Basic Polenta
6 Cups Water
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Corn Polenta
3 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
1 teaspoon Sea Salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground Pepper
1/2 Cup hard Cheese for topping, (Parmesan, Romano, Asiago)
1/2 teaspoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
In a large, deep sauce pan over high heat, bring water and sea salt to a boil.
Add polenta gradually, stirring constantly to blend.
Reduce heat to a low simmer; you’ll cook polenta for about 30 minutes, so set a timer to stir and check the progress of the dish every 5 minutes. Make sure to stir gently but thoroughly, all the way to the bottom to check for sticking and burning.
When the polenta is very thick, stir in the butter and then season with salt and pepper.
Oil a glass baking pan; spoon the polenta into the pan, even out with a spatula, and allow to set for 15 minutes, until very firm to the touch.
Cut polenta into thick slices and serve hot.
Top with freshly grated cheese.
If you’re from New England, you know about the B&M company, not to be confused with the huge British food conglomerate. A lot of folks, even locals, think that B&M is a Massachusetts based enterprise, but it ain’t so. Way back in 1867, George Burnham, started a canning business, was then joined by Charles Morrill, and Burnham & Morrill was born. B&M has been a fixture in Portland, Maine at One Bean Pot Circle, ever since. Their rightfully famous beans are still slow cooked in brick ovens, and their brown bread is the one, as far as I’m concerned. Their cans are filled with batter and the bread is baked in the cans, and that’s just how you do it.
If you’ve never tried it, do. Served with ham, baked beans, and cole slaw, you got your traditional Saturday Night Suppah.
8 1/2 ounces Buttermilk
6 ounces dark Molasses, (by weight)
2 1/2 Ounces Whole Wheat Flour
2 1/2 Ounces Rye Flour
2 1/2 ounces Yellow Corn Meal
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
2″ fresh Vanilla Bean, (or 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground Allspice
1/2 teaspoon Orange Zest
1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
2 empty 26 ounce metal cans with one end of each cut off.
Move a rack to the bottom third of the oven and heat the oven to 325° F.
Choose an oven safe pot or dish deep enough so that you can fill it with water to about halfway up the sides of the cans. Boil enough water on the stove top to fill that pot or dish.
Lightly coat the insides of the cans with vegetable oil.
In a mixing bowl, combine wheat flour, rye flour, cornmeal, baking soda, baking powder, allspice, and salt.
Add the molasses, buttermilk, vanilla and zest to the dry ingredients and thoroughly combine.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cans. Cover the top of each can with a double thickness of aluminum foil and tie securely with kitchen string. Place the cans in your deep pan and slide that into the preheated oven.
Carefully fill the pan with boiling water to about halfway up the sides of the cans.
Bake for 70 to 75 minutes. At seventy minutes, remove the foil tops. When the edges of the bread begin to pull away from the sides of the cans, you’re there.
Remove the cans from the oven, place on a wire rack to cool for 1 hour before sliding the bread out of the cans. If the bread is a bit sticky, a thin bladed knife run around the can will free it up.
Don’t forget to have plenty of fresh, local butter on hand…
If you’ve had strawberry shortcake while out and about, chances are good that it wasn’t, and you weren’t impressed. More often than not, what you’re served is kinda like a little sponge cake thing with some whipped cream and strawberries. If you’re lucky, the whipped cream is fresh and so are the strawberries, but luck is rare in this regard. You’re almost certain to be outa luck with the shortcake.
Lucky for us, Gen-U-Wine strawberry shortcake is easy to make; easier, in fact, than all that faux crap. I’ve been known to say that, “In the kitchen simple is always best, but not always easy”; here’s a case where it’s both.
Traditional shortcake, done right, is far more like a biscuit than a cake. This is precisely what you want, because it has the density to stand up to strawberries, juice and whipped cream without becoming a gloppy, saturated sponge. ‘Short’, in baking term FYI, means a higher ratio of fat to flour, resulting in a tender, crumbly cake. Flour variety matters as well, and pastry flour is what you want. Its relatively low protein content, (about 8% to 10%), makes it perfect for stuff that demands a light and flaky consistency, like biscuits, tart crusts, pastries, and cakes. All purpose or bread flour is right out for this recipe; they’ll make things hard and chewy.
Good strawberries mean ripe, local berries at the prime of their season. Yes, you can make strawberry shortcake at other times, but this is when it’s meant to be made, so that’s kinda what you need to do.
Good cream means real cream; local, heavy or whipping cream, not that ultra-pasteurized, mass produced crap that you see most often. My local version comes in a glass pint, and the real cream absolutely plugs the top of the bottle – That’s cream.
Here’s how ya do it.
For the cake.
2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 Cup Whole Cream (1/2 & 1/2 or Buttermilk are also fine)
1/2 Cup Honey or Agave Nectar
4 teaspoons Baking Powder
4 tablespoons unsalted Butter
Sea Salt
Preheat oven to 450° F.
Butter needs to be cold for this recipe; quickly cut it into 1/4″ cubes, then place in freezer until you need it.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, a pinch of sea salt, and baking powder; blend thoroughly.
Add the butter and work it Into the flour blend by hand, until the butter is uniformly the size of small peas
Add the cream slowly to the mix, mixing constantly.
Add the honey or agave and blend thoroughly.
The dough should be sticky; you can add a little more cream or flour at this point if you need to adjust.
Grab some dough and form a cake about hockey puck size, 3/4″ thick and roughly 4″ in diameter. Place the cakes on an ungreased baking sheet with a couple of inches between each one.
Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the biscuits are golden brown.
Don’t wander too far from the oven, they darken up pretty quickly.
Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
For the Berries.
4 Cups Strawberries
1/2 Cup Honey or Agave Nectar
Rinse, top and cut berries into quarters.
In a mixing bowl, combine berries and sweetener and blend thoroughly.
Place in an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use.
For the Whipped Cream
1 Pint real Cream
1 Tablespoon Honey or Agave Nectar
2″ Vanilla Bean, scraped, or 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Combine cream, sweetener and vanilla in a non-reactive mixing bowl.
Whip cream by hand or with a stick blender.
When the cream is holding stiff peaks, stop whisking, cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to use.
To serve, slice one biscuit in half. Place a half biscuit on a desert plate, add berries to cover evenly, then a soup spoon of cream. Repeat the layering with the other biscuit half, berries, and cream.
A mint leaf is a nice garnish, and the scent blends beautifully with the other ingredients.
I love potatoes, and you should too. This fancy sounding dish is actually simple as simple can be, the sign of a truly wonderful, timeless dish. Great with breakfast, brunch or dinner, the minimalist approach lets the flavor of the spuds shine. Yukon Golds are perfect for Anna; they crisp up beautifully and have that to die for creamy center we all love.
In our take on this recipe, we use Sel de mer for a truly French salt flavor note, and grains of paradise for pepper influence at its most elegant level. The cast iron adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the flavor as well.
Trust us, do it just like this, and then you can try your own variants. Don’t add anything else to Anna, just vary the kinds of salt and pepper used; you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the notable differences in each.
Build this recipe in the exact order I’ve shown here; you really need to minimize the time the potatoes go from sliced, to ice water, to oven in order to allow them to maintain their flavors without oxidizing.
6-8 Yukon Gold Potatoes
4 Ounces fresh, unsalted Butter
1 teaspoon Sel de Mer
Fresh ground Grains of Paradise
Rinse and peel the potatoes. Using a food processor fitted with the slicing blade or a mandoline, slice them very thin, (About 1/8″is perfect), transferring them as they are sliced to a large bowl of ice cold water.
Melt butter in a small sauce pan and remove from heat.
Preheat oven to 425° F.
Drain the slices and pat them dry between paper towels.
Generously brush the bottom and side of a 9″ or 10″ cast iron skillet with half a tablespoon of the butter, using a basting brush.
Arrange the slices in layers, overlapping each slice slightly; brush each layer with butter, a sprinkle of sea salt and a few twists of grains of paradise.
Cover the layered potato slices with parchment and gently but firmly press down on the assembled potato cake.
Bake on the middle rack for 30 minutes.
Remove the parchment and continue baking for another 25 to 30 minutes, until the slices are tender and golden brown.
Remove from oven and turn the Anna onto a cutting board and cut it into 4 to 8 wedges.
Serve with crème fraîche and freshly made scrambled eggs for a real treat.
UrbanMonique 