Brandon Eats

Goodbye, Sheila Lukins

The news of Sheila Lukins' death on Sunday from brain cancer (Michael Y. Park wrote a lovely appreciation on the Epi-Log at Epicurious this morning) has left all of us without one of the most influential cooks of the later half of the 20th century. With her book, The Silver Palate Cookbook, co-written with Julee Rosso, Lukins inspired legions of home cooks in the 1980's to re-imagine the way that they think about food and the way that they make it.

Influences could come from all over the world and the boring fare of the nightly dinner could instead blast out the flavor and transform the ordinary with just the addition of a couple of "exotic" (garlic, saffron, herbs) ingredients. Freshness--fresh vegetables, fresh herbs and a fresh approach--provided the new foundation Lukins wanted all of us to build upon.

I wrote an appreciation of The Silver Palate a few years ago (here's a link), and to this day, she remains, along with Julia Child, one of the most important reasons that I do what I do: cook, eat and write about the food I love.

Food, Inc. Give-Away Contest

Food, Inc. opens today in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and on July 10th here in Richmond (at Movieland).

It's a movie I think everyone should see, and as an added incentive, I'm giving away the companion book (featuring thirteen essays written by Eric Schlosser, Robert Kenner (director), Marion Nestle, Anna Lappe, Michael Pollan, Muhammad Yunus, Joel Salatin,  and Gary Hirshberg), AS WELL AS a copy of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Just send an email to brandoneats AT comcast.net and all names will go in a hat, or maybe a bucket, but probably a mixing bowl and will definitely be drawn by a 10-year-old or possibly a 13-year-old. The lucky winner will be announced Monday, June 15th!

Wake Up and Smell the Garlic

My taste buds must be catatonic most of the time. You have to whack them with garlic and shock them with lemon to get them to wake up. Subtlety is frequently lost on me. In fact, I think the word "subtle" generally means bland. Don't you? Or is that just me?

Imagine how excited I became when I found Andrew Carmellini's new book, Urban Italian. The combination of garlic, lemon, and chopped red onion is hardly new, but I'd forgotten all about it until I started flipping through his book. And I was flipping through his book because I had a pound of shrimp, not much else, and no ideas. 

I did have the aforementioned shrimp, a can of beans, and some salad. Although technically an antipasti, this recipe is perfect for two, with a few of the shrimp dispersed among the children who are willing to eat them. Add a lovely, crisp Pinot Grigio (for authenticity) and you have a meal that can be whipped up in fifteen minutes or less. Because the only cooking involved is a moment of garlic sauteing and a quick sear of the shrimp, it's perfect for an unexpectedly unbearable hot May evening.

I made a few alterations--children demand to be accommodated, after all (and although you're supposed to ignore that kind of thing, after all these years I'm too, too exhausted to fight that endless fight. My line in the sand is that they must eat what we eat--with a few, um, accccommodations).

Andrew Carmellini's Rock Shrimp with Cannellini Bean, amended

Bean salad:

1 15-ounce can cannellini beans (I actually used Great Northern beans because that's what I had)

1/4 cup red onion, minced within an inch of its life

1 large garlic clove, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

Freshly ground pepper

Splash of hot sauce

Drain and rinse the beans; mix all of the ingredients together and let sit while you make the shrimp.

Carmelli says you can add a little pesto (actually, I think it would be nice drizzled underneath or around the perimeter of the plate--unfortunately, I didn't have any).

Shrimp:

1 lb. shrimp (brined)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons fresh rosemary or more (I didn't want to kill my fledgling rosemary plants by completely denuding them)

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon parsley or more, chopped

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt (if you didn't brine)

Freshly ground pepper

Sprinkle of red pepper flakes (Carmelli suggests 1/2 teaspoon and I would have used this if I hadn't had children hungrily staring at me. As it was, I put this little bit in when they weren't looking).

Blot the shrimp thoroughly and in a wide skillet, heat the 2 tablespoons of oil over high-ish heat. Add the shrimp and cook until pink and white. Turn down the heat immediately.

Pull your pan off the heat to avoid burning the garlic (which it's now time to add), add a little more oil, plus the red pepper flakes. Put the pan back on a medium-low flame and saute of for a minute or two and remove from the heat again. Add the last two tablespoons of oil, thyme, rosemary, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Spoon the beans on two plates and arrange the shrimp on top, remembering to toss a few on another plate so your children won't starve. Naturally, if your children eat beans, double the above bean recipe. Mine don't, so I made a little pasta with butter--the default--on the side. Drizzle it all with a little more olive, if you like.

Ahhhhhhh. So easy and so wonderful!

Virtuously Vegan

Mark Bittman could tell me to how to eat worms and I'd probably follow his instructions to the letter. Fortunately, all he wants me to do, in Food Matters, is veganize my menu before 6:00 pm, and then he cuts me loose after that.

I can mostly follow that. I've got a weakness for dairy--oh, the siren song of yogurt at 4:00 in the afternoon--but I'm getting along pretty nicely. Helpful in my transition to a lesser-meat lifestyle is a book about which I can never say enough nice things. Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, created in their book, Veganomicon, a meatless compendium even the most dedicated of carnivores can love. Really.

Along with Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, you can revolutionize the way you eat and not even notice it. There's more chopping to do, yes, and granted, I still bitch about that and probably always will. However, a lot of my complaining in the past has been because the pay-off never seemed worth it in the end. My lackluster, tamari-laced meal,* the result of at least a solid hour of chopping and sauteing, rarely felt like the effort involved was rewarded.

Not so with Veganomicon (or Bittman). Below you'll find a recipe that my entire family ate without a blink, without a shudder, without even a tiny, sad sigh. Shock ensued when I informed them that it was vegan. This was clearly and definitively a success, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I don't know if it's your three names each that make you so magical with the culinary plant life, but I have to hand it to you--you've won me heart and stomach.

*Vegetarians sometimes seem to think that if they pump up the umami with a little tamari, anything will be palatable.

Recipe after the jump

Vegan? Or Not?

I'm not a vegan. I have a hard time with a philosophy that prevents me from eating cheese, or even worse, lobster (take that, all you non-pescatarian vegetarians!). Besides, I have little to no will power as it is.  I can't just suddenly ban whole food groups permanently from my diet. I'd never, ever last.

Call me weak. Or call me a pragmatist. And then insert hackneyed joke here. At any rate, it makes no sense for me to love Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero's book, Veganomicon, as much as I do.  Perhaps it's because Moskowitz and Romero make me forget about what I'm giving up and concentrate instead on all the new ways I can non-carnivorously enjoy food.

But I'm still a tough case.  I have a tendency to think, when I make their recipes, how much better they would be if I could throw a little something in from the off-limits column.  That's not to say the vegan food from this book isn't good on its own--it really and truly is--but for those of us ground so far down in that meat-loving rut, it's a paradigm shift that's hard to imagine our way into.

Bacon, I just can't quit you.

Kindle Me This

I got really lucky and Amazon sent me a Kindle to review. Sadly, I then had to send it back (a week late because I was frantically trying to finish reading Lush Life).  To read all about my experience when I did have it,  follow this link to HomeStyle.

Oh, by the way.  Those aren't my hands. Or my fingernails. Both are generally covered with band-aids (gotta keep those knives sharp, sharp, sharp!).

Deceptively Disgusting

As Jessica Seinfeld, author of Deceptively Delicious, and Missy Lane Chapman, author of The Sneaky Chef, duke it out in court over charges of plagarism, my children have already rendered a verdict--both books stink.

Now,whether or not Jessica Seinfeld lifted ideas from Chapman's book (and Slate makes a good case that she probably didn't), doesn't really concern me.  In fact, I think the idea of sneaking vegetables into children's meals is hardly rocket science--or original.  Most cooking parents have tried their hand at it at one time or another, with varying success.  Personally, I think liberally adding bacon to just about any dish will usually guarantee a child will eat it.  Or melting butter on top of it.  Lots of butter.

Those aren't particularly healthy choices, however, so we press on, looking for ways to get something green past the lips of our recalcitrant child.  What's wrong with these kids, anyway?  How do they survive to adulthood on crackers and pasta, with the occasional glass of juice to wash it all down?  Why are they even growing?  The only answer my pediatrician has ever given to me to these important questions was a heavy sigh and a question back to affirm whether or not my child was taking a daily (sugar-filled gummy worm-shaped) multi-vitamin every day.