Slaying the fearsome dragon fruit

Great bowls of fire!

There’s a strange new animal stalking the aisles of the produce section of our grocery store these days. It’s beautiful and a little dangerous looking… with long over-lapping scales tipped in green overlying a glossy, red, leathery skin. It’s almost as if it’s breathing flames at you… or getting ready to stab you with poison darts!

Oh No! It’s Dragon Fruit… Hide!

Of course it’s not an animal at all.  It’s a delicious but sinisterly attractive food called the Dragon Fruit. I say ‘sinister’ because you do have to be a little careful. First of all, look them over closely in the store. Choose one with green tips (not brown and withered). And eat it only once the flesh gives slightly when pressed. You don’t want one that is too mushy or too firm. Like most fruits (and porridge), it tastes best when it is ‘just right.’

Let it soak for a few minutes in fresh water, like you would any fruit. After all, it came to you from a long distance. You never know how a food is treated on its journey. This is not one of those foods that has been grown just down the road, after all…   that is, unless (unlike me sitting here in chilly old Ottawa, Canada) you live in Mexico and places further south,  Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Hawaii, Israel, Palestine,  Australia (north), or China (south)… . What all these exotic places have in common is heat. And heat is just what  the dragon-fruit-bearing Hylocereus cactuses love.

It seems there are several species of this cactus,  with variations on the color of the skin and the fruit they bear. But the one we’ve seen popping up in Canada has red skin and a creamy fruit studded with tiny black seeds, rather like a kiwi.

Eating this fruit is a piece of cake. Just take a sharp knife and slice it lengthwise.  It cuts like butter. Then take a large spoon with a sharp edge (if you have one like that) and try to scoop out the soft flesh in one large piece.

Trim off any hint of the red skin from the flesh and throw it away. I’ve seen some references that say the skin is a good source of fiber. But I’ve seen others that say it can contain toxins! If anyone has an authoritative source on this matter, I’d love to know about it.

I like to cube the edible flesh and pile it back into the bowl made from taking the flesh out of the dragon fruit in the first place. The flesh tastes delicious.. sweet, mild, soft like a kiwi but not as tart, and gently perfumed. There is nothing unusual about it that you would have to get used to. In fact, you might want to serve it with a yogurt dip to zap it up a notch.

Of course, I wouldn’t be mentioning the dragon fruit if it wasn’t good for you. Dragon fruit is low in calories and is a good source of  vitamin C, phosphorus, calcium, plus fiber and antioxidants. It’s said to be good for lowering cholesterol and in the management of diabetes. So there. The next time you spot dragon fruit in the fresh foods section of the supermarket, don’t pass it by.  See if you can slay a couple of them! Then serve them to Firefox and any other of your friends (or your friends’ pets). They’re also good in a fruit salad. Stay tuned for a recipe another day. And so, here ends another adventure in good food, brought to you by your pal, Vinny Grette.

Custard fight! Stirred… or baked?

Custard fight – “Baked” dukes it out with “Stirred”

James Bond may have taken his martinis stirred. But in a recent egg custard duel, Stirred came in a far second behind Baked!

See for yourself. Using the same ingredients, eggs, milk, and sugar, follow the directions below for two different ways to cook them.  What you end up with is either a sauce… or a pudding.

People usually pour custard sauce over fruit or cake. Baked custards are sometimes jazzed up with caramel or liqueurs.

After you taste the recipes below, tell me, how do you like your eggs?

Stirred custard:

Get ready…

Get out 3 eggs, and measure 1 3/4 cups skimmed milk, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

You need a medium sauce pan, a metal spoon, a large bowl of ice water, a medium-sized pitcher or bowl, and plastic wrap.

Get set…

1. Cook the eggs, milk and sugar over medium heat in the saucepan. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens and coats the metal spoon. If it starts to boil, take the pan off the heat.

2.  Put the pan into the ice water. Stir a few minutes to cool, add the vanilla, then pour the mixture into the pitcher or serving bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

Baked Custard

Get ready…

Get out 3 eggs, and measure 1 1/2 cups skimmed milk, 1/3 cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

You need a medium sauce pan, a spoon, four to six oven-proof single-serving baking cups, a baking pan large enough to hold the cups, a kettle of boiled water, and plastic wrap.

Get set…

1. Put the milk in the saucepan over medium heat until you see steam rise. Stir in the sugar until it dissolves. Remove from heat to cool.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Beat the eggs with a hand-mixer at high speed until they foam, then get thick and bubbly, about 3 minutes. Pour the eggs slowly into the cooled milk and stir. Then spoon the mixture into the ovenproof  cups in the baking pan. Pour 1/2 inch of boiling water from the kettle around the cups and put the pan in the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a knife inserted into the custard comes out clean. Take the pan from the oven with oven mitts. Take the cups from the water and let them cool for 30 minutes. Eat right away or put into the fridge for later.

“Stirred” is better for dipping!

Go…

Now for the fun part. Pour some of the stirred custard into a small glass. Take a spoonful of  baked custard from the cup. What does it look like? How is it different from the  stirred  custard? Taste some from each type of dessert. What are the differences? What is the same about each of them? Which do you like the best?

But “Baked” wins!

You are now ready to try some recipes for custards. There are many variations on both the stirred and baked types. I like one called creme brule from Alton Brown, but it’s a bit rich.  I save it for special occasions. Look at the ingredients. Do you see why it’s rich? Now have a look at a recipe for creme caramel or panna cotta. They have less saturated fat, so they’re better for us. I usually use skim milk instead of whole milk or cream. It tastes good enough

Congratulations! You’ve done a food science experiment by altering only the method of cooking. You now know the difference between a sol (the sauce… a liquid colloid) and a gel (the baked custard… a solid colloid). Check out the link. If you understand this stuff, you get an A in Chemistry!

Fried blue eggs set the mood for a green Christmas

Murre egg? Afraid not!

How you serve up a meal is often more important than what you serve. Food that looks different from what you’d expect  can put you off. Or, it might just be fascinating.

Rumor has it that prospectors ate blue eggs during the gold rush… the eggs of murres. Eggers from San Francisco took almost half a million murre eggs a year from the Farallon Islands in the mid-19th century to feed the growing city. But were they really blue? Vinny couldn’t find any proof. If you’d like to see what blue eggs  might have tasted like, fry up a batch of Vinny’s eggs, below. This dish will certainly set the mood for a green Christmas.

Fried Blue Eggs

Ingredients
½ cup chopped red cabbage
1 egg

Get ready…
1. Boil the cabbage for 5 minutes  in a small pot on medium high heat in 1/2 cup water. Strain the purplish red juice into a small glass and put it in the fridge to cool.

2. Carefully crack the egg and separate the yolk from the white. If you have an egg separator, this will be easy. If not, it takes a little practice. Here’s how. Put each yolk and each egg white in its own bowl.

Get set…
1. Add 1 tablespoon  of the red cabbage juice to the egg white and whisk with a fork until the white is uniformly colored. The reddish juice turns emerald-green when it’s mixed with the egg white.

2. Heat a frying pan with 1 tsp of  oil on medium heat on the stove. When a drop of water sizzles in the pan, pour the green egg white into the pan, then place the yolk in the centre. Cover the pan for a few minutes. Cook the egg until the bluish-green whites are firm and the yolk no longer jiggles when you shake the pan.

Go…
With a flipper, take the bluish-green egg from the pan, sprinkle with a little sea salt and some pepper if you like, and enjoy!

How does it work?

Anthocyanins in the red cabbage are red when the food is acidic (or sour), but they change to bluish-green when the acid in the food is neutralized (or alkaline).  Egg whites are one of only a few foods that are highly alkaline, so the red cabbage juice turns green when it’s mixed with the whites.

Scientists are studying anthocyanins, found in many brightly colored foods, to see if they protect against disease. Lab studies are promising, and clinical trials on people are now under way.

Taste test

Blindfold the taster and see if he  can tell the fried blue egg from an ordinary fried egg. Let Vinny know what you found out!

Sharon and Vinny meet up with kids at Ottawa Farmers Market

Reading at the Farmers Market

Sharon bundled me up the last two sunny Sundays and carted me off to the Ottawa Farmers Market, at Lansdowne Park. She also took along our book, Cook Up A Story, and some other props. We hoped to meet with some kids who would like to listen to stories where good food sets the mood. And we met lots! We talked to the kids and their parents about making choices about the foods we eat. And we even sold some books. It was a great time and we hope to be back the last Sunday in September for more of the same. Many thanks to Chris Cooper for snapping some shots of Sharon with the kids at the market. You can sort of see my arms and legs sticking out from behind Sharon’s back. Next time hope she finds her own chair!

I took some time away from my blog in August because our summer cottage had no Internet access. Most of the time it never even had a telephone! We had fun making birdies on a stick and campfire birthday cakes there, though, on the barbecue. We used my own recipes of course, from the pages of my book.

To preview the book, click on the book’s cover, below.

Cook Up A Story. See main menu for more about the book. Click pic to order.

Hope to get back into posting more food factlets, recipes and book reviews soon. Keep checking this space!

Foods with lots of ewww factor

Yes… but what the heck IS it?

Have you ever imagined sitting in a far-away land and tasting some really weird stuff? Celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain does more than imagine… he’s goes out and eats whatever is put in front of his nose. And most of it sounds really awful! Now, you can read all about it, in A Cook’s Tour: In search of the Perfect Meal.

How about a little sip of clear juice from a bottle filled with snakes, coiled around a beaked bird still dressed in all its feathers? It’s popular in Vietnam. No? Well, then. Maybe a nest of hardened spit from a Chinese swallow appeals? Bird-nest soup is the most expensive dish in China, where they’ve been enjoying it for hundreds and hundreds of years. If you are brave enough to taste it, Anthony says it’s like noodles, pretty ordinary. “The chunks are the problem,” he says. “They come from hacking up a whole pigeon. Meat, bones, eyes, beak, and all go into a drained coconut shell, and are then cooked with the nest, medicinal herbs, dates, scallions, ginger, and the swallows’ eggs.”  Lots of folks like this dish. Maybe you would too? Perhaps you would even classify it as the perfect meal?

Dipping into chef Bourdain’s travel book takes a pretty strong stomach. But if you can stand it, he also dishes out some tips for great places to travel to. It makes for adventurous reading, for foodies and nonfoodies, alike.

And while we’re on the topic of trying new foods, there are folks out there who band together to do just that. The Gastronauts is one such club, and they’ve tried the strangest things… tripe, tongue, even live drunken shrimp.

Just saying, next time your mom serves up  parsnips or Brussels sprouts, in comparison, it shouldn’t seem that bad to taste a few bites. Just imagine you’re Anthony. Or out with the Gastronauts.  You might just learn to like a new veggie! Remember, the more kinds of food you try, the better your chances of getting all the nutrients you need for a healthy body and a sharp mind.

And in case anyone is still wondering what they’re serving in the photo at the top of this story, it’s just a tasty monkfish on the Costa Brava in Spain. Fish is a great source of magnesium, which protects your heart and helps prevent stroke. If the waiter says you can eat the eye, don’t listen to him!

A Cook’s Tour
Anthony Bourdain
Raincoast Books 2006

Food Surprises… A Pocket Full of Rye

Vinny made this tourtière from pork, not pigeons

Remember that song about a pocketful of rye? The king cuts into his pie, and surprise… a blackbird nips off his nose! This nonsense isn’t as silly as it first seems.

For one thing, birds have turned up for centuries in tourtière, a kind of pie they serve at parties in French Canada. It’s named for the passenger pigeons (tourtes in French) that once went into making it. The pie must have been a real hit—the passenger pigeon is now extinct. Chickens, turkeys, even ducks, find their way into tourtière today. But usually, it’s pork.

Then, there are these little songbirds—captured alive and fed oats and corn (and, according to the song, rye). It’s rumored they’re drowned in brandy, roasted whole,  and eaten… bones, beak, and all! It’s a  food mainly meant for kings, presidents, and celebrity chefs. I would guess if one of these little chirpers ever managed to survive its stay inside a pie, no wonder it’d be mad enough to peck off your nose!

But really. Most parents would never think of serving up such a crazy dish to kids. So actually, it’s pretty safe to taste most of the odd things our folks put on the table for us to eat. Like, say they come home one day with a pocket full of rye and plunk some of it on our plates? Go ahead. I say, don’t be afraid to try it.

Rye has quite a powerful taste. But rye bread is a super hero. Its complex carbs take a long time to break down into sugar in our stomachs. We stay full longer without adding overly to our blood’s sugar load. And that’s a good thing.Why not add rye bread to the list of things you’ve tasted lately? You may just find yourself singing a song of sixpence!