Pairing Easter Ham and Wine - Micro Blog

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Easter's coming, and at my house Easter is marked by the presence of a spiral baked ham. I'm pretty good at pairing wine with beef/buffalo, poultry, sea food, even white pork such as chops or loins. I wasn't sure about ham though, until I looked it up one Easter season.

Generally speaking, ham has a light sweet flavor, especially when glazed with a mixture of honey or cola. A heavy wine, would drown out such flavors and tart wines will taste funny against the sweet glazes. Thus you want to go with a gentle, light, semi-sweet wine. Red wine lovers will find Pinot Noir does very well. For white wine fans, Gewurztraminer is spicy and sweet, which compliments ham nicely.

Being a fan of whites, I usually go the Gewurztraminer route. This year though, my family over ruled me, in favor of beer for tomorrow's meal. That works too.

What are the rest of you planning to serve?

Prosciuttopedia

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After a few long days of writing, I'd planned to spend the good part of a day playing online poker on Facebook. Along the right side of Facebook's poker table lies an ever present column of advertisements. As I played, I kept noticing a blurb for Prosciuttopedia.com - The first online encyclopedia about the Italian art of Salumi making.

Those who know me, know I have a genuine fondness for Prosciutto, and most other cured meats, for that matter. Whether they're wrapped around melon, served with Brie on a baguette, or displayed as part of a sandwich buffet, those salty fat laced tissue paper thin slices of pork goodness never fail to make me smile. With this fondness in mind, I thought I should check this site out. Upon calling an Ace high flush with a King high straight, I found myself with ample time to explore Prosciuttopedia.com.

The first statement on the home page reads, "Learn the secrets behind the Italian Cold Cuts (Salumi), their origins, their production and characteristics. Delight yourself with our Salumi tasting tips." This statement is followed by a photo and description of the period's featured meat. Then the site is divided into five subsections.

Italian Cured Meats: Defines a number of cured eats, including Speck, Capocollo, Pancetta, and many more.

Packaging and Beyond: Defines packaging terms as they apply to cured meats, much like I did with general groceries recently.

Time To Eat: Provides information and advice to help you make an informed choice on the most suitable products, with in-depth information on allergens, preservatives and ingredients.

The Art of Tasting: Offers pairings and serving suggestions for various kinds of cured meats.

Meat curing Techniques: Gives short descriptions of the procedures that transform the raw material into delicious cured meats.

Each entry, in every subsection, can be clicked on, taking the reader to a more detailed explanation of the entry in question.

Featuring beautiful photographs of Italian cured meats, and well written novice friendly text, Prosciuttopedia.com is a great site for foodies, restaurateurs, and anyone who's planning a dinner party or other nosh-related event. You'll find a permanent link to it in the right hand column under Links Of Interest.

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Side Note:
I've added 2 other Links Of Interest lately, which are worth checking out.

Vintage Sugarcube - Freelance food writer, Jenny Johnson, offers a deconstructionist's take on traditional, and not so traditional, dessert recipes, via her fun attitude driven writing style.

For the Love of Cuisine - Culinary graduate, Kymberlee Fajardo, passionately writes this easy to follow recipe blog, featuring vivid photographs and hunger inducing text.

April is National Grilled Cheese Month! - Micro Blog

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Grilled cheese and tomato soup is one of my favorite meals. Surprising to most people though, is my cheese of choice for the classic sandwich. Being a food snob, people often guess I'd use sharp Cheddar, Munster, Gruyère, Feta, or Gouda. Those are all fine cheeses, with special places in my heart, but for a good grilled cheese sandwich I prefer ooey gooey American Cheese. It's the ONLY thing I like American Cheese for, but for a perfectly melted sandwich, nothing beats those floppy rubbery processed little slices. Crisp some bacon and add it to the sandwich, on whole wheat, before grilling, and you'll have made one of my all time favorite sandwiches.

For those of you who don't keep processed cheese in your fridge, you can celebrate the month by grilling:

Prosciutto & Gruyère with a dollop of Dijon Mustard on Italian sourdough,

Steak & Provolone with green peppers on flatbread,

Pepperoni & Mozzarella with sun dried tomatoes on garlic bread,

or use your own imagination.

Leave your favorite Grilled Cheese variation in the comments.

Happy eating. :-)

Bush Garden Japanese Restaurant

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Every city has a hand full of restaurants which can be thought of as culinary landmarks. They're the restaurants which have been there, seemingly, forever, and which you can't imagine the city being without. New York has The Four Seasons and Delmonico's, Chicago has Gino's and Billy Goat Tavern, Boston has Union Oyster House; and Portland has Ringside Steakhouse, Jake's Grill, and Bush Garden.

Growing up, I've often heard the story of my grandparents visiting from Indiana, and being taken to Bush Garden. Family lore has it that my parents and grandparents ate an authentic Japanese supper, while seated in the traditional lotus position on the floor of one of the restaurant's rice paper partitioned rooms. What makes the story worth telling, is the description of my grandmother trying to pick her self up off the floor after having enjoyed the ample meal, served by exceedingly polite kimono clad waitresses. It was apparently quite a sight to see.

While I've known about the restaurant for 35 years, and have caught the train in front of it on numerous occasions, I hadn't eaten there until last night. I'd taken my mother to see the Matinee showing of Broadway's critically acclaimed production Billy Elliot, and skipped lunch to ensure making it to Keller Auditorium on time. Needless to say, by the time the show let out at 5pm, we were ravenous. We'd planned to come back to Beaverton to partake of Pastini Pastaria's new Steamed Penn Cove Muscles Appetizer and Farfalle with Asparagus & Lemon. However, we let our hunger convince us to hunt for a closer source of succor to our hunger.

Having dismissed the idea of Morton's, purely for fiscal reasons, we were headed to Jake's on 10th & Morrison, when we passed Bush Garden. Mother hadn't been there for years, and I'd never eaten there, so we quickly agreed to give it a shot. Neither of us being particularly athletic, we chose to eat at one of the tables in the dining room, rather than the floor of a private room.

As appetizers, I ordered the Gyoza (Pan-fried dumpling) for $5.25, and mother
chose the Soft-shell Crab (Deep-fried whole crab served with ponzu sauce) for $4.25. Ponzu sauce is a tangy soy-based sauce is traditionally made with citrus fruit and sweet rice wine, which gave the crab, perfectly savory by itself, an additional layer of flavor. My Gyoza, or dumplings, were 6 delicious potstickers, served with their own salty soy-based dipping sauce.

Even before our appetizers came, we received the small seaweed & carrot salads, bowls of miso soup, and the bowls of white rice which were included with our meals. The miso soup was piping hot with a tart/savory flavor, and the purple seaweed & carrot salads were cold and crisp, in contrast to the soup, with a nice mild flavor.

As for our entrees, I had the Seafood Tempura (Prawns, scallop, squid, and white fish dipped in tempura batter and deep-fried.) for $19.50, and mother ordered the Bush Salmon (Salmon, sauteed in butter, lemon, sake and soy sauce, served with tartar sauce) for $19.50. Her salmon delivered a delightful salmon flavor, and the lemon sake sauce boosted the dish to the next level. Personally, I can't imagine a diner using the provided tartar sauce to mask the delectably delicate flavors.

I, on the other hand, must confess to being disappointed by my entree. The prawns, scallop, squid, and white fish were dipped in tempura batter, deep-fried, and served with a deep fried stalk of asparagus, a deep fried slice of zucchini, and some kind of deep fried flowers. Usually, deep frying foods adds a level of succulent flavor to an already tasty food. Here, neither the batter nor the underlying food offered any taste at all. The white fish was flaky when bit into, and the prawns had pink markings and the tales still attached, allowing me to identify those two elements by sight. Yet, I couldn't distinguish the scallops from the squid because it all tasted the same.

Overall, I'm happy to have eaten at Bush Garden. The servers were friendly, eager to please, and offered a genuine apology for serving our main courses when we were less than a third of the way through our appetizers. Plus, I had some nice bites of crab and salmon, and some good potstickers. However, now that I have eaten there, I feel like I've "been there, done that," and feel no need to go back.

I give Bush Garden 80 out of 100 points.

In Food Labels We Trust?

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When watching campaign speeches, reading op-eds, reading book reviews, etc..., most of us know we're partaking of opinion, which may, or may not, reflect reality from our perspective. We accept that going in. However, when we read labels at the grocery store, we expect to be reading rock solid facts about what we're planning to put into our bodies. Recently, students from Trinity High School in New York City, revealed that some food labels may in fact be as misleading as typical campaign promises.

Students were teamed up with scientists from the Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History to see if they could extract DNA from common household items such as feather dusters. During the project, they tested 66 foods from various grocery stores in the area, and discovered something startling. Eleven of the sixty-six groceries tested weren't actually what their labels said they were.

Mislabeled Foods Included:*

"1. Shark meat is what was advertised in the store but the DNA testing proved it was Lates niloticus, a fresh water fish from Africa - commonly known as Nile Perch.

2. A product labeled "anchovy" came back as Protosalanx chinensis, which is actually not anchovy but a type of smelt fish.

3. One item was labeled "red snapper," but the DNA testing showed it was Lutjanus malabaricus, which is actually a different type of fish called the Malabar blood.

4. At a specialty store, a product labeled "sheep's milk cheese" was tested and proven to be cheese made with cow's milk.

5. Another item labeled "sturgeon caviar" was tested and the DNA came back as Plyodon spathula, a fish commonly known as the Mississippi paddlefish.

6. "Pacific Ocean smelt" was what was advertised in the store, but the DNA testing proved it was actually Odontesthes gracilis. It is not smelt, but a silverside family of fish.

7. "Frozen yellow catfish" DNA tested as Odontesthes gracilis. According to the fish database, this is not yellow catfish.

8. A dog treat labeled as "venison" (deer meat) tested as beef.

9. A fish sample that was labeled "mackerel" was tested and came back as Sardinella atricauda, a fish commonly known as Bleeker's black tip sardinella.

10. One product that was labeled "Jewfish" came back with DNA that showed it was actually Nemipterus furcosus, a fish commonly known as fork-tail threadfin bream.

11. A product labeled in Chinese translated to "Branchiostoma lancelet amphioxus, but DNA tests proved it was Salangichthys microdon, a fish commonly known as Japanese ice fish."

The statistical implication is that one out of every six foods we buy is mislabeled. Sure, it's theoretically possible that these kids just happened to pick the only eleven mislabeled foods on the shelves, but the proposal of such an explanation would make even the most reckless gambler balk. Mathematically speaking, it's far more likely that these eleven samples represent a portion of what's available from our stores' shelves and counters. However, the one in six ratio can't be thought of as a solid number until the project has been duplicated repeatedly with much larger sample sizes. Nevertheless, it's unfortunately clear that a level of deception exists regarding the foods we buy.

Some people may shrug and say, "Paddlefish eggs probably taste as good as sturgeon caviar." These people are missing the point. Substituting cheaper goods for the genuine article is fraud, pure and simple. Beyond the issue of legally defined deception however, lies a much more important consideration. We have the fundamental right, unwritten though it may be, to know what we're putting into our bodies.

Shoppers depend on labels for a variety of important reasons. Some people of faith need to eat Kosher or vegan in order to walk a particular spiritual path. Others avoid eating non-sustainable fish and other ingredients for moral and ecological reasons. Then there are those who have food allergies, diabetes, and other conditions, in which case the wrong ingredient could sicken or kill the eater.

The question is, what can shoppers do to protect themselves? I've been hunting for the answer to this question all week. After reading I don't know how many articles; emailing the FDA, a professional chef/caterer, a much read cheese writer; and participating in a number of other conversations, I must report the answer to be a resounding, "not much."

I'm lucky. From where I live, I have access to two very nice Farmers' Markets, three if I take the train to Portland State University, where I can buy produce, and a few other staples, directly from the source. Plus, my favorite cheese monger and wine seller happens to be my sister in law. She's educated enough in what she sells that I can trust what I buy from her shop.

Yet, even with Farmers' Markets and gourmet specialty shops, I eventually have to go to my local supermarket for corn flakes, canned soup, and baloney. Without my Bat-DNA-Testing-Kit from my utility belt, I pretty much have to accept a label's word as to a package's content, unless I'm super-familiar with a particular meat or fish, or it's a glaring error (trout in place of salmon).

I really don't like the fact that we have no way to independently determine the contents of our food, now that we know some labels are misleading. Still, the fact that "some are fraudulent" means that most are legally accurate. Keep in mind though, legally accurate labels can be deceptive if shoppers are unfamiliar with the legal definitions of terms companies routinely use to describe their products. With this in mind, I've researched some food labeling terms and clarified their actual meanings.

Fortified, enriched, added, extra, and plus: These terms mean that nutrients, such as minerals and fiber, have been removed to make room for vitamins to be added during processing. If fiber matters to you, look for the terms 100% whole-wheat bread and high-fiber.

Fruit drink: This means you're buying a fruit flavored beverage, most likely containing little or no real fruit juice. If your intent is to put actual fruit juice into yourself and/or your kids, look for products that list the percentage of juice in the product.

Made with wheat, rye, or multi-grain: Again, without the word "whole" as a modifier, such products may contain very little whole grain.

Natural: This can be the most misleading term of all, since it only means the manufacturer started with a natural source. Once it's processed though, the end result may not resemble anything found in nature. If it's important to you to eat foods provided by mother Earth, or close to it, look for the terms "100% All Natural" and "No Preservatives."

Organic food: First, ALL produce, meats, fish, poultry, dairy products, eggs, and grains ARE organic, since they're carbon based and were once alive. They're even 100% organic. If you want to buy foods which are produced using environmentally sound methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives, look for labels that say "Certified Organically Grown."

Sugar-free, fat-free and trans-fat-free: These terms DON'T mean the foods in question have NO sugar, fat, or trans-fats. They mean, the foods contain less than .5 g of sugar per serving, less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving, and less than .5 g trans-fat per serving. None of these terms means the product in question is necessarily low-calorie. The manufacturer may have added ingredients to compensate for missing sugars and fats by boosting flavor, and the product may have no fewer calories than its sugary fatty counterpart. If you're counting calories, you're far better off paying attention to the number of calories per serving.

Lite: This term, when applied to food and beverages, describes a food or drink that contains fewer calories than usual, but may not necessarily contain a low number of calories. If product X has 450 calories per serving, X Lite may have 425 calories per serving. Again, pay attention to the number of calories per serving.

Ham in natural juices, Ham water added, and Ham and water product: These product labels, in the order listed above, indicate how much water remains in the ham after its final processing. If the ham has less than 20.5% but is at least 18.5% protein, it can be called "ham with natural juices". A ham that is at least 17.0% protein and up to 10% added solution can be called "ham water added". Finally, "ham and water product" refers to a cured hind leg of pork product that contains any amount of added water. Buying a "ham and water product" may very well mean you're buying more water than meat. A"HAM" only label means the product contains 20.5% protein and no water, or a minimal amount of naturally occurring water.

Happy Shopping! :-)

*List of mislabeled foods found at www.myfoxny.com.

Lorini Vin Xanto: Vin Liquoroso - Micro Blog

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Lorini Vin Xanto: Vin Liquoroso is a liquoroso style of the traditional Tuscan Vin Santo (Xanto) dessert wine. The wine is produced by adding a small amount of brandy to the grapes to fortify the wine.

The bottle was a gift from Italy. Since the label's in Italian, I couldn't find the exact percentage of alcohol. It has a bit of a kick to it though. Thus, I drink 1 to 2 ounces at a time, and pair the aperitif with an almond biscotti, which I soak in the wine to soften the cookie as I eat it.

The liquoroso has a deep amber color, sweet initial flavor with a raisin-esc undertone, and kind of a bitter finish.