Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.

******************************
This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Paul Prudhomme's Barbecued Shrimp: The Most Glorious Meal So Far This Year (February 2007)
This was a truly awesome--and surprisingly easy--recipe.

How to Make a Great Seafood Stock (February 2007)
Make your dishes taste far better and richer without adding high sodium broth or bouillon.

The Granola Blogroll: The Ultimate Authority on Great Granola Recipes (February 2008)
This post, which features an incredibly wide range of granola recipes, has been a massive traffic generator here at Casual Kitchen.

How to Enjoy Wine On A Budget (February 2009)
Don't fall prey to the misconception that you have to spend a lot of money to enjoy the pleasures of wine.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

On the Earthquake In Santiago

Most Casual Kitchen readers know that Laura and I are here in Santiago to spend a few months improving our Spanish, and this post is just a quick, off-topic update to alert family and friends that we are safe and sound after last night's earthquake. It was one of the most surreal and frightening experiences we've ever had, and suffice it to say we expected to come to Santiago, Chile to learn Spanish, not to learn what it's like to experience a 7+ Richter magnitude earthquake at 3:30 in the morning.

A few words about the city of Santiago and how it weathered the quake. In our neighborhood of Providencia, there is little to no apparent damage to any of the buildings. The buildings and the city in general are made very well, and in our homestay host's home--other than a lot of broken plates and dishware (and the somewhat creepy fact that both the stove and refrigerator came unmoored and moved 2-3 feet across the kitchen floor)--there is surprisingly little damage.

But during the worst of the quake, we had no idea what to do. It was nearly impossible to stand up without holding onto something, and the main quake seemed to go on forever, accompanied by the sound of things falling and glass breaking throughout our homestay host's home.

Now, some 8 hours after the initial main tremor, there are still periodic aftershocks, a few of them disconcertingly strong. What's more disconcerting is how the ground has been vibrating, constantly, ever so slightly, for hours. It feels alive, for lack of a better word.

We are very lucky that Santiago is one of the most modern cities in the western hemisphere, but other cities in the country were not so lucky. Concepcion, for example, where a friend of ours lives, suffered much more damage and we are still awaiting word from her.

Right now, the city is quiet and except for the ground occasionally vibrating, you'd think it was a typical Saturday morning. The power is on, internet is on and the phones are working.

We'll share more on the situation here as things develop.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday February 26, 2010

Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Sígame en Twitter!

*************************
How to cook more like a real chef, even if you're not. (Food Woolf) Bonus Post: Why restaurant staff don't get any respect.

The good, the bad and the ugly about raw milk. (Backyard Farming) Bonus Post: Another reason why oatmeal is the perfect breakfast food. (via @pixelpushr)

Ten thought-provoking rules for good food blogging. (The Amateur Gourmet) And related here at CK: How to write a great links post.

Ever wonder what types of wood to use for smoking different barbecued meats? Dave shares his list of favorites. (Food and Fire)

Recipe Links:
Easy and unusual: Tomato Braised Cauliflower. (Steamy Kitchen via Discovery.com)

From the co-author of the exceptional cookbook Almost Meatless, a creative and meatless Chickpea Tikka Massala. (The Oyster Evangelist)

Coconut Balls. Nothing more needs to be said. (Scott Can Cook)

Deep fried eggs: Yet another way to jazz up your morning eggs! (A Life of Spice)

Off-Topic Links:
How to eliminate a submissive mindset after experiencing an abusive relationship. (Climb the Rainbow) Bonus Post: Finding the Perfect Man.

Using "one week on, one week off" as a tool to boost your productivity. (Steve Pavlina's Blog)

For the stock-market-curious: What do investment pundits mean when they say "don't fight the Fed?" (A Dash if Insight)



Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!

SponsoredTweets referral badge

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

North African Lemon Chicken

I came up with the basic idea for this week's recipe while flipping through a cooking magazine in my dentist's office of all places. I'd just read over a recipe that was somewhat similar, but was poorly conceived, badly written, had too many steps and needed heavy ingredient modifications. And yet I thought it had great potential.


The irony of today's recipe being loosely inspired by a bad recipe in a bad cooking magazine isn't lost on me, but I consider it further proof that you can find cooking inspiration almost anywhere. All you have to do is keep your mind open and look out for it.

With just a bit of practice, you'll be able to make this exotic yet easy recipe in well under 30 minutes. Better still, you can feed four people for the laughably cheap cost of around $7.00. Enjoy!
*******************************
North African Lemon Chicken

Spice Mix:
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Ingredients:
4-6 Tablespoons olive oil, in all
1 pound chicken breasts (~2 breasts), sliced into 1/2-inch thick medallions
2 medium onions, cut into slivers
4-5 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
About half a lemon, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups stock or broth
1 generous cup black olives
1-2 Tablespoons flour

Directions:
1) Combine the spices in a small bowl. Use half to season the chicken, set the remaining half aside.

2) Heat 2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a large non-stick saucepan. Sear the seasoned chicken slices on very high heat until slightly browned, about 3-5 minutes. Remove chicken and set aside.

3) Add another 2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil to the pan, then add the onions. Saute on high heat until the onions just begin to brown, about 2-3 minutes. Turn heat down to medium, and add the garlic, thinly sliced lemon and the remaining half of the spice mixture. Saute for another 4-5 minutes.

4) Add the stock and olives and then deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add back the chicken. Simmer for 5 minutes, gradually adding the 1-2 Tablespoons of flour to thicken the sauce slightly. Serve over rice, brown rice or couscous.

Serves 5-6.


*****************************
Two quick recipe notes:
1) This recipe is really hard to screw up. I think the only instance where you need to be careful is when you add the flour to thicken the sauce. Be sure to add it gradually or else the flour can clump up in the sauce. Other than that, the only thing worth worrying about with this recipe is whether or not to eat the lemon slices. I do, Laura doesn't.

2) Calling all vegetarians: you can easily make this dish 100% veggie by substituting chickpeas for the chicken (two cups of cooked or canned chickpeas should suffice).


Related Posts:
Fattoush! A Middle Eastern Salad Recipe
Ten Tips to Save Money on Spices and Seasonings
Shrimp in Tomato Sauce: Middle Eastern Cuisine
The Hummus Blogroll: 17 Easy to Make Hummus Recipes
How to Make a Versatile Vegetable Stock

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.

******************************
This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Ten Strategies to Stop Mindless Eating (February 2007)
An extremely popular post here at Casual Kitchen, and one of my very first forays into the psychology of food.

A Can of Bud (February 2007)
My wife writes her first and only post here at CK, poking fun at me for needing a solitary can of Budweiser beer for a recipe.

Spicy Eggplant Ratatouille (February 2008)
An imaginative and unusual vegetarian soup that's easy to make and laughably cheap. A side note: be careful what you touch after handling jalapenos...!

How to Rewrite a Recipe: Shells with Artichoke Hearts and Shrimp in Lemon-Oregano Vinaigrette (February 2008)
Some recipes need a little surgery to make them easier to read and easier to make.

Greek Pasta with Spinach, Olives, Tomatoes and White Beans (February 2009)
An easy, healthy and delicious pasta dish that you can make in 25 minutes flat.

Open That Bottle Night (February 2009)
One of my favorite wine events of the year. Choose a bottle of wine you've been saving for a special occasion, and on the last Saturday of February, open it! Wine isn't meant to collect dust in a bottle, it's meant to be enjoyed.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday February 19, 2010

Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Sígame en Twitter!

*************************
Before you eat that omelet, read this sobering polemic about some of the ugly truths behind the egg industry. (Health and Happiness Club, via @LCEatsLentils)

What's your take on McDonald's McItaly Burger? One of my favorite food bloggers addresses the subject, and an interesting (and pro-McDonalds) debate emerges in the comments. (Dana McCauley's Food Blog) Bonus Post: Casual Kitchen's thoughts on the subject too!

Casual Kitchen readers know to avoid bagged salads because they are familiar with the concept of Second-Order Foods. The rest of you should read this article. (Food Politics)

Everything you'll ever need to know about setting up an effective weekly meal plan. (Dad Cooks Dinner)

Recipe Links:
Intriguing and easy: Savory Cheese Cookies. (Christie's Corner)

Simple, cheap and delicious: Fresh Homemade Pasta. (30 Bucks a Week)

The ultimate secret to a perfect, easy Chicken Stew. (Jeena's Kitchen)

Off-Topic Links:
Are you familiar with The Great American Apparel Diet? Intriguing, and a really good idea given the current economy.

Don't build cages. Give out keys instead. (The Art of Non-Conformity)

In praise of memorization--something front of mind for us lately as we struggle with some of the more abstruse tenses of Spanish! (Ben Casnocha's Blog)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!

SponsoredTweets referral badge

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

A Few Thoughts on McDonald's and the McItaly Burger

I'm sure most of you have heard about the controversy surrounding McDonald's and its recent efforts to embrace regional food in Italy.

I thought I'd share a few thoughts on this story, and then throw it out to readers for your thoughts.

To me, the idea that Italy is selling out its cuisine to a big corporation is simply laughable. Sure, nobody will ever confuse McDonald's food with quality homemade Italian cuisine. But how does securing a large, local customer for foods grown by domestic Italian farmers equate to selling out? In my view, it's an act of support, during a time of deep economic stress no less, for a critically important domestic industry.

It's more typical of governments to create confusing food pyramids, or worse, create enormous bureaucracies which, ironically, fail to regulate the very industry they are designed to regulate. Italy's Agriculture Ministry deserves some credit for not getting in the way of a good idea.

Keep in mind that Italy has some 60 million people, and it's the world's 10th largest economy. Therefore, when a large company in Italy makes a relatively sound environmental decision, and then scales that decision across the entire country, it can make an enormous difference--both for the environment and for the local agriculture movement. Let's not instinctively bash McDonald's just because it's some big corporation.

Here's a rare example of a private sector company doing something surprisingly sound from an environmental standpoint.

As far as what the culinary impact might be, well, we might have to keep our expectations a bit low on that front.

Readers, what's your take?

Related Posts:
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
How Food Companies Hide Sugar in Plain Sight
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Dumb and Dumber: The Flaws of Measuring Food Costs Using Cost Per Nutrient and Cost Per Calorie

A (trick) question for readers: Which of the following is a better value?

1) Two pounds of collard greens (about 300 calories) for $1.49

2) Two pounds of 85% lean ground beef (about 1,300 calories) for $4.59


Which would you pick?

Looking purely at the raw cost of each item, the collards are, duh, obviously cheaper. But there are other, more complicated, ways of looking at food costs.

You could consider the cost on a per calorie basis. If you consider the two foods this way, then the ground beef becomes the better deal. Sure, it may cost three times as much as the collards, but it yields more than four times the calories.

You could also consider the cost on a per nutrient basis. This yields a different result yet again: the collards, which are loaded with vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants, dominate the ground beef.

So, when we try and look beyond the simple dollar cost of two simple foods, we come up with completely contradictory results. Confused? Me too.

Which brings me to the point of this post: Be careful. When you are considering the relative value of the foods you purchase, don't put all your faith in either cost per calorie or cost per nutrient. Both measures have their merits, but both can also be extremely misleading. In this post I'm going to focus on the problems and deceptions that can occur when we look at foods in these two ways.

Let's start with the weaknesses of cost per nutrient. I'll start by confessing that I like this measure and I believe it provides useful value. If consumers could see easy-to-understand information in stores about the rich range of nutrients in inexpensive foods like lentils, carrots, potatoes, beans, as well as other in-season fruits and veggies, they'd likely buy these foods a lot more often.

But which nutrients are we measuring, exactly? And how do they compare? Is Vitamin A worth more than Vitamin C (which I guess must be worth more than Vitamin E)? Is precious Lutein more valuable than boring old fiber? And if we were to slavishly measure everything by cost per nutrient, then mega-vitamin pills would be the best bargain of all. And that, unfortunately, would subvert the entire purpose of using this measure in the first place: to encourage people to eat healthy and inexpensive greens, fruits and veggies.

Furthermore, the cost per nutrient measure could be gamed quite easily. An example: what's to stop the branded boxed cereal industry from aggressively promoting the vitamins, minerals and nutrients they chemically add back to their cereals? Who knows--they might even take the next step and make the claim that their sugar- and salt-laden cereals boost immunity! (Wait, you say they already tried that? Oh.)

Let's now address the weakness in using cost per calorie, which is in my view the dumbest and most deceptive way to measure food costs.

Here's why: at $3.99, a 12 ounce bag of fat- and salt-laden Doritos should seem like a ripoff, considering all the processing, packaging, transport and marketing costs that make it one of the most expensive second-order foods in your grocery store. But on a cost per calorie basis, things start to look a little screwy. Once you divide your bag of Doritos by 1,600 (that's the calorie count in a 12 ounce bag), and then you divide your collard greens by their measly 300 calories, you'll be horrified to find that collards cost 1/2 a cent per calorie, while Doritos only cost 1/5th of a cent per calorie.

That's right, by when you measure by cost per calorie, collard greens cost two and a half times more than Doritos! Only in the utterly confused food industry can we manage to make a two pound armload of collard greens at $1.49 look more expensive than a $3.99 12-ounce bag of Doritos.

Let me savage on this ridiculous cost per calorie metric further. Think about this: on a cost per calorie basis, zero-calorie diet soda is one of the cruelest ripoffs in all of food--it literally costs infinity. And negative-calorie ice water doesn't compute at all--in theory the store should pay you for buying chilled water!

It can be useful to look at these non-typical ways of measuring food value, but don't get too wrapped up in them. They can mislead, and they can be easily gamed by skilled food marketers. Use them as additional information to consider, never as the only consideration.

Related Posts:
Ten Tips on How to Cut Your Food Budget Using the 80/20 Rule
How to Feel Less Hungry on Fewer Calories: Hacking the Satiety Factor of Foods
How to Resist Irresistible Food
How Food Companies Hide Sugar in Plain Sight
15 Creative Tips to Avoid Holiday Overeating

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.

******************************
This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Cookbook Review: Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen (February 2007)
One of my all-time favorite cookbooks. See Paul's amazing, sinus-burning and artery-clogging Cajun Meatloaf recipe.

How to Apply the 80/20 Rule to Cooking (February 2008)
One of Casual Kitchen's fundamental concepts is that cooking can be a lot easier, a lot cheaper and a lot more fun than you think. Put the ideas from this post to work in your kitchen and you'll see exactly what I mean.

The Favorite Cookbooks of My Favorite Bloggers (February 2008)
I polled three of my favorite bloggers for their very favorite cookbooks, yielding an exceptional list of titles.

Baking for Beginners: Beer Bread (February 2009)
At first we were horrified that sweet beer could be used in this way, but we changed our minds entirely after we tasted the finished product.

11 Really Easy Rice Side Dishes (February 2009)
You can complement any meal with this wide range of easy-to-make rice dishes.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday February 12, 2010

Saludos once again from Santiago Chile! Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Sígame en Twitter!

*************************
Kris lays waste to a lie that we see constantly reinforced in the media: healthy food is expensive. (Cheap Healthy Good)

An exceptional post about how food blogging turns us all into weirdos. (5 Second Rule) Bonus post: when restaurant menus lie.

Professional wine-tasters are full of sh*t. (1 Wine Dude)

An inflammatory article on how the beverage industry killed the soda tax. (Accidental Hedonist) Bonus Post: An alternate view of the soda tax debate.

Four money-saving tips for using your dryer. (Almost Frugal)

Recipe Links:
A delicious, easy and inexpensive Moroccan Chicken Soup. (Andrea's Recipes)

An intriguing Cheddar Horseradish Spread. (Coconut & Lime)

Wow on this easy and highly original recipe: Crash Potatoes with Orange Zest. (Kayotic Kitchen via @KathrynElliott)

The Ultimate Buttermilk Recipe Repository: 41 recipes to help you finish off that partial quart of buttermilk left over from some other recipe. (Pink of Perfection)

Off-Topic Links:
Are you choosing to live a deliberate life? Here are seven questions you can ask yourself to see. (Uncornered Market, via The Future is Red)

Put your politics and your scapegoating aside, and read this counterintuitive (and I think accurate) piece on the real cause of the financial crisis. (Christian Science Monitor)

A painless (and hilarious) way to learn the key differences between the left/liberal economic theories of Keynesians and the right/conservative economic theories of Hayek and the Austrian school. (Cafe Hayek)



Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!

SponsoredTweets referral badge

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

10 Ways to Rethink Water Use in Your Kitchen and Home

(photo credit: darkpatator)

Today's post will give you ten easy ideas on how to use water more efficiently in your kitchen and home. Water is one of cooking's most important ingredients, yet the wide availability of safe drinking water throughout the developed world can make it easy to take this precious resource for granted. It's not surprising, then, that water is one of our biggest sources of preventable waste.

By rethinking your water use, you can help the environment and save money too.

Optimizing Tap Water and Hot Water Use:
1) By installing a simple aerator onto your faucets you can reduce your tap water use by as much as 50% with little sacrifice in functionality.

2) When you let your hot water faucet run until the water heats up, don't let that excess water go to waste. Consider capturing it for other uses, like watering your plants or for cleaning.

3) Briefly turning on the hot water tap is a no-no. If you turn on the hot water and let it run for a few seconds, you are still wasting hot water--even if no hot water comes out of the tap. For every drop of cool water that runs out of the faucet, an equal amount of hot water flows from your heating tank into the pipes. That hot water never makes it to the tap: it just sits in the pipe, cooling its heels, while your hot water tank draws in new cold water to heat up again! It's a double whammy of energy waste.

4) Bonus tip for kitchen sinks with single, uni-directional faucets: if you intend to draw cold water from your faucet, take care to push the faucet handle all the way over to the "cold" side. If you push the handle straight back, you'll pull a mix of hot and cold water, wasting heat and energy for no reason.

5) Using your dishwasher doesn't just save time, it saves water too: hand-washing dishes in the sink can use twice the water of an average dishwasher--as long as you make sure to run it with a full load.

6) Most homes are fitted with conventional tank-style hot water heaters that use energy to keep a large reservoir of water heated at all times. If you use hot water infrequently and in small quantities, consider installing an on-demand hot water heater instead.

Saving Energy While Cooking With Water:
7) You can heat a pot of water more efficiently by covering it with a lid, trapping heat and steam that would otherwise escape.

8) An Electric Tea Kettle (two typical examples on Amazon) is by far the most efficient household tool for boiling water. These handy gadgets boil water much faster and with far less energy than a traditional stovetop tea kettle. Also, once the water comes to a boil, most electric kettles automatically shut off, reducing energy waste further.

9) Water is exactly the same temperature at a vigorous boil as it is at a gentle boil, and no matter how much additional heat or energy you apply to boiling water, the temperature will never exceed 100 degrees Celsius. Once your food begins boiling, consider turning the burner down significantly. You can maintain a slow or moderate boil with considerably less energy.

10) Furthermore, you can turn the burner off entirely during the last few minutes of boiling pasta or vegetables, using the water's passive heat to finish cooking your food. Water holds heat extremely efficiently, so this technique can save a lot of energy without compromising food quality.

A final note of thanks: I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Kate Heyhoe and her exceptional book Cooking Green for inspiring me to write this post.

Without changing your politics, or completely disrupting your routine, you can reduce greenhouse gases simply by rethinking what you do every day: consume food.
--Kate Heyhoe, from Cooking Green

Related Posts:
Review: Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe
Defeat the Diderot Effect in Your Kitchen and Home
What Have You Given Up That You Don't Miss?
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Rising Food Costs



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Shrimp Creole, Paul Prudhomme Style

"Mmmm.... this is restaurant-quality stuff!"

Whenever we have dinner guests over--especially friends who eat out all the time and rarely cook--I know this is the highest of high praise.

And Chef Paul Prudhomme's Shrimp Creole is one of those "restaurant quality" recipes. It's not an easy recipe, and it's not exactly laughably cheap like many of the other recipes here at Casual Kitchen, but it's still very much worth the slight extra expense and effort--and it's still far cheaper than a similar restaurant meal. If you like spicy, rich food, you won't believe you made something this good with your own hands.


So many people are shocked to find out that a regular person--yep, a person just like you or me--can cook amazing dinners just like this at home. You can.
******************************
Shrimp Creole
Modified from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen

Ingredients:
2 pounds medium to large shrimp, with shells on
2 1/2 cups, in all, of seafood or shrimp stock

1/4 cup chicken fat, pork lard, bacon fat or Crisco
2 1/2 cups, in all, chopped onions
2 cups chopped celery
1 1/2 cups chopped green bell pepper

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons white pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne (hot) pepper
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons Tabasco
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 Tablespoon dried thyme leaves

3 cups peeled tomatoes, chopped
1 1/2 cups canned tomato sauce
2 teaspoons sugar

Plenty of cooked rice

Directions:
1) Peel and rinse shrimp, refrigerate until needed, saving the shells to use in your shrimp stock. Chop onions, celery, bell peppers and garlic. Also, bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil, briefly blanch tomatoes, peel, and set aside for later.

2) Heat the chicken fat or other fat over high heat in a large pot. Add one cup of the onions and cook over high heat for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Lower the heat to medium and keep stirring, until the onions have caramelized* (see below) into a rich brown color, but not burned, another 3-5 minutes.

3) Add the rest of the onions, celery, green peppers and butter. Cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until celery and pepper become tender, roughly 5 minutes.

4) Add: garlic, bay leaf, all spices, Tabasco, and just 1/2 cup of the stock (basically add everything but the tomatoes, tomato sauce, sugar and the rest of the stock). Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring and scraping the pan bottom well.

5) Add the tomatoes and simmer for another 10 minutes. Then add the tomato sauce, sugar and remaining 2 cups stock and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

6) Cool and refrigerate if making the sauce the day before (and do not add the shrimp yet!). If serving immediately, turn the heat off and add the shrimp. Cover and let sit for 5-10 minutes, or until the shrimp are just plump and pink and not overcooked. Serve immediately by placing a mound of rice in the center of a plate and ladling a generous portion of shrimp creole sauce around the rice.

Serves 8-10.


******************************
Several recipe notes:
1) I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to make your own stock for this recipe. I know it adds extra steps and time, but it is worth it. Our labor-saving trick is this: we will make one of our typical vegetarian soups or stews earlier in the week, and I'll save all the veggie trimmings from that dish, chuck them in the pot and simmer the stock for a few hours that day. Then, when we buy the shrimp, I'll devein and peel the shrimp one day before I make the sauce and add the shells to the stock, simmering it for another 4-8 hours to give it even more body. You'll have plenty of extra stock left over that you can freeze and use in other recipes, like our Risotto, our Easy Sopa de Lima or our Chicken Marsala. You won't regret it.

2) * Caramelizing the onions is perhaps the single most important process step in the entire recipe. Somehow, this step imbues the entire dish with a soft and sweet flavor:


3) It really helps to have a helper for this recipe, especially one who's sufficiently motivated by the promise of a delicious meal that she'll happily do this recipe's worst prep job: peeling and deveining the shrimp.


4) A word about the fat used in this recipe. Many of Paul Prudhomme's recipes involve the use of a disturbing amount of butter and/or fat. This recipe is not health food, people. Just remember these kinds of meals should be cooked (and gorged on) in moderation. Furthermore, I would not use olive oil as a substitute--it is too likely to smoke during the step where you caramelize the onions on high heat. Be sure to use a fat or an oil that has a higher smoke point.

5) Like many recipes, this dish tastes even better the next day, so if you really want to wow your guests or your family, make this sauce a day in advance, and then when your guests arrive, bring the sauce to a good boil, and then add the shrimp (PS: any sauce that can be made a day ahead of time lends itself very well to dinner parties).

6) Oh, and try to avoid overcooking the shrimp.

7) As I said earlier, this dish isn't laughably cheap--in fact, it might be the single most costly meal in this entire blog. That being said, the aggregate cost of this dish was $20.08, of which $11.48 was the cost of the shrimp. But given that it serves 8-10 quite generously, the cost per serving was still in the neighborhood of $2.00-$2.50. Once again, proof that with a little practice anyone can cook restaurant-quality meals and still eat cheaply at home.

8) Finally, it's hard to believe such an amazing recipe has such a simple list of ingredients. Like I said before, you too can make food like this at home!






Related Posts:
Cookbook Review: Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen
Garden Gumbo Recipe
Shrimp in Tomato Sauce: Middle Eastern Cuisine
Shrimp in Garlic Sauce (Camarones Ajillo)

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.

******************************
This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

The "How to Modify a Recipe" Series (February 2008)
This three-part series will teach you to adjust and modify any recipe. First, it starts with a basic recipe modification example (using my Waffles recipe); second, we move on to my Six Rules of Recipe Modification; and then finally we go over a more complex modification example. After reading this series you'll be able to bend any recipe to your will!

The Greatest Chocolate Mousse in the World (February 2007)
It is shocking how good this mousse really is. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

How to Make a Versatile Vegetable Stock (February 2008)
Once you start making your own stock, you'll never go back to lame store brand broth or salt-heavy bouillon again.

Smoky Brazilian Black Bean Soup (February 2009)
This black bean soup is easy to make and it has a memorable and interesting spicy kick. It later went on to become one of top favorites of my Best 25 Laughably Cheap Recipes of Casual Kitchen post.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday February 5, 2010

Greetings y saludos from Chile! A quick update: Laura and I will be spending the next three months in Santiago, valiantly attempting to improve our extremely rusty Spanish. Don't worry, I'll maintain Casual Kitchen's regular posting schedule while we're here.

Also, readers, if you've visited Chile and would like to suggest any must-eat foods or must-go-to restaurants,
please email me!

Once again, here's another Friday assortment of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments and feedback.

PS: Sígame en Twitter!

*************************
Want to lose weight and boost your metabolism? Then eat a REALLY big breakfast. (EcoSalon)

A helpful post on cooking oils that explains smoke points and which oils to use when. (Grow. Cook. Eat)

Ideas on how to practice mindful eating--a great complement to CK's post this week on Mindful Chewing! (Brigham and Women's Hospital via @jules_stonesoup)

Don't pay up for ridiculously expensive composting equipment--read this post for a much cheaper and laughably easy way instead. (Andrea's Recipes)

Recipe Links:
A wonderfully simple Pan Fried Salmon with some highly creative seasonings. (A Life of Spice)

Screamingly delicious Super Bowl food: Baked Loaded Potato Skins. (Cheap Healthy Good)

A bit of work to make, but well worth the effort: Moussaka. (REC(ession)IPES)

An intriguing recipe for Seville-Style Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Liadillos Sevillanos). (A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa)

Off-Topic Links:
This week's book recommendation: Everett Bogue's The Art of Being Minimalist. I just finished this e-book and consider it exceptional and worth recommending to readers. (Note: this is an affiliate link, so if you decide to purchase it, you'll be helping out Casual Kitchen too!)

Rules for ideas worth spreading. (Seth's Blog)

Everyday life is filled with moments that we can either do with purpose or do without thought. Today, choose one of those moments and fill it with attention. (MCM Voices Voiceover Blog)

An exceptional essay on the fearless and lonely life of Malcolm X. (The Art of Non-Conformity)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!

SponsoredTweets referral badge

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Mindful Chewing: How To Cut Your Calorie Intake in Half--Without Feeling Hungry

Everyone knows that there are enormous health and dietary benefits to eating more slowly. In this post, I'll talk about a laughably easy technique you can use to help you cut your eating speed and caloric intake in half--perhaps more. Best of all, you won't feel the least bit hungry or deprived.

How? By chewing.

Chewing is the one thing everyone does, but nobody thinks about. But this overlooked and underappreciated first step in digestion is one of the easiest ways to slow down at a meal and achieve satiety on considerably less food.

When you mindlessly rush through meals and swallow large chunks of insufficiently chewed food, it's not only far easier to overeat (we'll discuss why shortly), but you risk incurring digestive problems like indigestion, bloating and even intestinal blockages.

In contrast, when you properly chew your food, your entire digestive tract works more smoothly. Careful chewing also helps you appreciate and enjoy all of the complex and subtle taste sensations of a food.

Taste is the doorway. You must appreciate taste... It is not just about being thankful, it is to make eating a holy experience, so the energy from the food can enter your body.
--from
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

Is there a magic number for how many times you should chew your food? Not really. It depends on the crunchiness and the caloric density of what you're eating. For example, a homemade tortilla chip might require more chewing than a bite of chocolate mousse, but because chocolate mousse may contain far more calories per bite, you might want to "chew" the mousse much more than necessary to slow down and prevent yourself from eating too much.

In short, there's no magic number here. But I've found in my own experience that I tend to enjoy my food more, and eat far more slowly, when I make a point of chewing at least 15 times per bite of food.

And yes, lately I've been literally counting in my head while I'm eating, because I'm actively trying to build mindful chewing into a consistent habit at the dinner table. So if you happen to be eating dinner with me and I get a strange faraway look on my face, you'll know why.

Finally, the most important benefit of slow, mindful chewing is the automatic delay factor that it builds into a meal. We've discussed elsewhere in this blog how your body doesn't figure out that it's full until after a lag of some 20-30 minutes. This 20-30 minute period is the most precious part of every meal, because it represents critical fulcrum time during which you can avoid dangerous overeating.

The key benefit of mindful and careful chewing is that it slows down the entire eating process, allowing your brain to catch up to your stomach and figure out that it's full long before you've eaten too much. Result? You'll enjoy your food more, eat far less, and you will push back from the dinner table without feeling hungry or deprived.

Readers, how do you approach chewing at the dinner table? What habits have you built upon to help you eat more slowly and mindfully?

Related Posts:
Review: The End of Overeating by David Kessler
My Raw Food Trial: Full Archive of Posts
Nobody's Colon Blew: Reader Q&A On My Raw Food Trial
How Food Companies Hide Sugar in Plain Sight
The 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen
The Pros and Cons of Restaurant Calorie Labeling Laws

Photo Credit: Bruce Tuten

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!