Accidental Hedonist

The marketplace has determined that there is room for organic products, even if it means higher prices. For the extra cost it helps ensure that a) animals are treated humanely and b) It helps sustain family farms and allows consumers a viable alternative to corporate mega-farms. It’s an idea that has exploded in the food market over the past dozen years.

So it’s not surprising that once it had been determined that there was a market for such products, some corporate farms sought to get a piece of the pie. Enter Dean Dairy, who has a vested interest in Horizon Dairy. So now, Horizon Dairies have a similar distrubution model as Dean Dairy, including outsourcing milk production to satellite dairies.

That business model has now caused some ethical problems for Horizon Dairies. The Cornucopia Institute has filed formal complaints with the USDA‘s Office of Compliance asking them to initiate investigations into alleged violations of the federal organic law by factory farms operating in Idaho, Colorado and California. These factory farms produce milk under the Horizon Organic label.

At dispute is the dairies compliance to Organic standards. The National Organic Standards Board, appointed by the secretary of agriculture, determines standards that determine what products considered “organic” and what doesn’t. When it comes to organic milk, some of the standards include:

• Organic dairy cows must eat grain that isn’t genetically modified or treated with pesticides or fertilizers, and the cows cannot be given growth hormones or antibiotics.
• Dairy cows must have access to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air and direct sunlight suitable to the species, its stage of production, the climate and the environment.

The cows at the locations mentioned by the Cornucopia Institute are reported to NOT have access to pasture, violating one of the above standards which make organic…well…organic. “According to reports, both the Idaho and California operations differ little from conventional confinement dairies other than having their high-producing cows fed certified organic feed”, says Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst, at the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

About that certified organic feed:

Craig Muchow, a diversified organic farmer from Gooding, Idaho noted that the Dean/Horizon farm has turned its back on many area farmers after initially seeking their support: “After Horizon converted their large farm to organic they solicited local hay growers and offered us a price-premium to supply them with alfalfa if we also converted to organic production. That worked well for the first few years but then they did away with most premiums and now they have abandoned many small farmers in the area altogether.” According to a number of neighbors, much of the feed the Horizon farm now buys is shipped in on railroad cars and processed by one of the largest corporate agribusiness concerns in the United States.

So now we have an organic farm that treats animals poorly and does not support local family farms. This now begs the question – Is Horizon Organic truly Organic?

Some people worship Jesus Christ, others Buddha or Mohammed. me? I worship Baklava. It’s a religion that pays off nicely. Oh sure, it doesn’t explain the injustices in the world, nor does it provide any moral compass. But you know what? It doesn’t matter because your eating Baklava.

Bakalava has been around for ages. Around 800 BC, it is told that the Assyrians had a dish that put together a few layers of thin bread dough, added chopped nuts in between, placed some honey on top and baked it in their primitive wood burning ovens. That makes Baklava older than the Roman Empire and is a testament to just how enjoyable this dish can be.

Being that the recipe is so old, you can imagine that there are hundreds of recipes out there. Let me re-assure you. There are. Some have cloves, other cardamon. Some use wlanuts, others use almonds. As with many recipes, there is no one way to make baklava…aside from phyllo dough with a nut mixture in between layers, covered in a sweetening agent of some sort.

The Following recipe does not have honey, and is instead made with a rose-water simple syrup, giving the bakalva an air of other worldiness. Actually, with the Rose water and cardamom, this recipe is more of an Arab version than Greek or Turkish.

All praise Baklava, amen!

• 1 cup water
• 1 1/2 cup bakers sugar (granulated will also work)
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) rosewater
• 3/4 cup blanched almonds, ground
• 3/4 cup shelled pistachios, ground
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 lb unsalted butter
• 1/2 lb of phyllo dough (1/2 package)

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a sauce pan, heat the 1 cup of water. As the water starts to boil, stir in the sugar and allow to dissolve. Take off the heat. Stir in the rose water and set aside for later use. I kept it over low heat while working on the rest of the recipe.

Finely ground the almonds and pistachios together in a food processor.Pour into a medium size mixing bowl and add the powdered sugar and ground cardomom. Mix well.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small dish. Remove any foam that may appear on the top of the melted butter. This will help ensure you have clarified butter.

Get out the phyllo dough and carefully seperate it into layers. Each sheet used should fit into a 13″ by 8″ space.

Grease and flour a 13″ baking dish. Place 3-4 layers of phyllo dough on the bottom of the pan. Paint the dough with butter, using a pastry brush. Top the layers with 4-5 tablespoons of the nut mixture. Top again with 3-4 layers of phyllo dough. Repeat the butter, nut mixture, dough process until the nut mixture is used entirely. End with 4-5 layers of phyllo dough on top. Slice the baklava into squares or diamonds. Top with the remaining butter and place in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is a crispy golden brown.

Pour syrup over top and garnish with whole pistachios and powdered sugar.

(SIDE NOTE: If you want a larger baklava, simply double the size of the nut mixture, and count on using almost an entire package of phyllo dough)

Serves 12-16

I’m currently looking through and researching various recipes for pistachios, and I have noticed a very troublesome pattern.

Many people believe that cooking with Jello brand Pistachio pudding mix is equal to cooking with actual pistachios.

Words fail me.

So I’m sitting at home in my studio apartment. I am geeking out on the internet, as I am prone to do, when there is a little knock upon my door.

It’s fairly late, and I live in a building that you have to be buzzed in, so I am suspicious. I carefully open the door, and what do I see?

Why it’s a certain special someone, bearing a certain special gift: A cookbook.

Not any cookbook, but a special cookbook – Pure Chocolate : Divine Desserts and Sweets from the Creator of Fran’s Chocolates written by Seattle’s own Fran Bigelow.

I’m given specific instructions. To earn this book, I have to complete two tasks:
1) I have to make a version of the Key Lime White Chocolate Tart that’s coincidentally bookmarked already.
2) I have to make the Alsatian Onion Tart that Orangette had posted only days before.

I agree to these stipulations. The cook book is handed over and I drool over the pictures for the rest of the evening.

*sigh* My life is so good.

I’m a Democrat…I think regulation of some industries is a good thing. But even I think that a call for government regulation of salt is just downright silly.

The big three components when it comes down to stuff-in-food-that-may-be-bad-for-you-if-you-over-indulge include salt, fat, and sugar. Of those three, sugar is the one that may actually cause the most damage over time. Ironically, sugar is the one product which is relatively new to our diet, becoming a staple sometime in the 1500′s if memory serves correctly. Both salt and fat have been part of our diets since…well…since we started getting fish out of the oceans.

Another issue here is that salt may not be the end all be all problem that the Center for Science in the Public Interest think it is. As an article in the Guardian notes, it’s quite possible that some of us can eat above average amounts of salt without living dangerously. There are as many studies showing a relationship (not a causality, which is something entirely different) between high sodium intake and hypertension as there are studies that show that hypertension is based off of appetite, genetic inheritance and environment.

In short, the results on salt aren’t in yet.

Besides, even if it were shown conclusively that salt was responsible for high-blood pressure, should I, as an informed consumer, be willing to subject myself to the risk that it may cause, instead of an advocacy group telling me that I can’t?

Last night was spent having dinner and conversation with several Seattle Food Bloggers. For the first time I got to meet the folks behind such wonderful sites as Amuse-Bouche, Culinary Fool, I Heart Bacon, Orangette, and Tasting Menu.

We congregated at Malay Satay Hut and discussed (surprise, surprise) food blogs! The amount of passion that was on display at the table certainly made me feel less obsessive about the deeds that I do for dinner.

One of the things that was brought up, by Orangette if I recall, was the idea of context of food, an idea I wholeheartedly support. Although we didn’t really elaborate on this idea, it’s one that I believe is important when it comes to understanding food.

What people eat in any given area is determined. This means that there will be products which are readily available, and those which will be difficult to find. More often than not, these items are determined by economic status, tradition, accessibility, food knowledge, market forces and political forces (There are probably more, but those are the ones that rolled off the top of my head).

For example, those of us from the East coast mentioned the lack of good bagels or corned beef in Seattle. But as the Culinary Fool pointed out, these items are not here because there is no culinary tradition of those products here. What passes for a bagel or corned beef here survives, because the collective knowledge base in the Pacific Northwest allows the market to sell second and sometime third rate products. The best illustration of that in the Seattle area surrounds our search for the perfect pizza (which we’ve discussed here before).

Conversely, we can look at a town like Lawrence, KS and wonder just what is going on in their neck of the woods. There are local traditions and market forces (Beef is big time there, and decent BBQ can be had as it’s only an hour from Kansas City), but at the same time, this is a part of the country where Whole Foods just doesn’t exist. Do you think you can find decent prosciutto, salmon or Dim Sum there? Not likely. The context of their food traditions is completely different from what’s here in Seattle, or even in Chicago or New York, London or Paris.

I love the idea of context, as it allows us to see the bigger picture. That is one thought(of many) that I took from last nights get together.

If ever there was a nut with identity issues, it’d be the poor little pistachio. Americans? We love ‘em dyed red. If you have them in ice cream, you’ll see it as a soft pastel green. Although some varieties of pistachios do have lightly rust-colored skins (especially if they are bruised) their primary color, the color of the meat of the nut, runs from light beige to bright green. So why are some dyed a bright red?

The Straight Dope has the answer: because years ago when pistachios were all imported into the U.S., the antiquated harvesting and processing methods in the Middle East often left blemishes on the hulls. So they dyed them to mask the unsightly marks. Red was chosen as red draws attention.

So when it comes to pistachios, remember this: They are almost never red, and are only slightly green.

These little nuts have been around for quite a long time. Archeologists have found evidence in a dig site at Jarmo, near northeastern Iraq, that pistachio nuts were a common food as early as 6750 BC. As you often see when it comes to popular foods, it became a favorite of those in power, which in turn made the pistachio associated with royalty and religion. Nebuchadnezzar, the ancient king of Babylon had pistachio trees planted in his hanging gardens. In the celebrated imperial court of Queen Belghais of Sheba, pistachios were a privilege for royalty and the elite…because Sheba thought the nut as a powerful aphrodisiac, and wanted the bliss of sexuality to be an upper class activity only. Back in the day, pistachios was the caviar of its time.

This occurred deep into the middle ages. Remember that trade affected cost, and the cost of importing pistachios into the regions of France, Italy and Spain made the little nut available only to those with money. Then, after pistachio plants made their way into the farm lands of Italy and Spain, they became more available to the general populace.

This probably explains its identity issue. Think about it – if you were once on the top of the heap, and then find yourself being sold in vending machines along side of Good n Plenty’s, then you’d want to disguise yourself as well.

At any rate, we move from walnuts to pistachios. I’m thinking about making baklava, maybe some Persian dishes and definitely ice cream. My goal with the ice cream making? To see just how green the ice cream becomes.