Toddler Tastes

A few months ago on his blog, Anthony Bourdain was musing with horrified dread on the subject of what he would feed his infant daughter when she started eating solid food.

A lot of foodie moms (myself included) posted with the hopefully helpful advice that babies and toddlers will eat what you feed them. That is to say, if they never get a taste of Chicken McNuggets in the the first place, they won’t insist on a diet that consists only of questionable chicken parts nuggetized and breaded with unknown substances and deep fried in half-degraded oil.

Watching Kat eat her own little bowl of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Spaghetti the other day made me realize that I hadn’t really talked about how toddler’s tastes change and how to guide those tastes toward healthy, delicious food choices.

So far, Kat still tends to prefer flavorful, healthy foods, although she does love her ice cream, chocolate preferably. She doesn’t get much in the way of cookies or cake or candy, simply because we generally don’t keep such foods around our house. She still most often shares our meals with us, although there are some foods she doesn’t seem to like much. Cow milk, except in the form of cheese, preferably sharp cheddar, cream, ice cream or yogurt lassi, is on her “I don’t consume it” list. Meat is a sometimes food as well: some days she will refuse it, while at other meals, she cannot get enough of it. I have noticed that she tends to prefer chicken and pork to beef, but what she seems to prefer above all meat is eggs. (Kat really digs Cilantro Chicken Stir Fry–she eats that chicken so fast I can barely keep up with shredding it into little bites for her.)

She likes scrambled eggs so much that Zak has taken to calling her “The Oviraptor.” She can power through one to two extra large farm fresh eggs from pastured hens in record time, gobbling them up using both a spoon and a hand, if the spoon method is too slow. She likes the way I cook them best–well beaten with a tiny bit of cream, a sprinkle of herbs and slowly cooked with a bit of butter–all local. At the end, I add a sprinkle of shredded sharp cheddar and serve it forth to her great appreciation.

Fruits and vegetables are a seesaw ride. One day she cannot get enough of oranges and tangerines, then two days later, they are the untouchables of the citrus world. Apples are beyond great one minute, and the next, she is tossing them to the cats as outcast unclean. Asparagus is viewed with suspicion when sauteed in butter, but let it be cut up in a creamy pasta dish and it is better than good and is pounced upon and gobbled up. Tomatoes are almost always the best beloved, although now and again they are given a fierce toddler glare that eloquently says, “I don’t think so.”

Noodles of all types, both Western and Asian, are a great hit, as is anything over or in rice. Pasta, especially long thin noodles, have the extra bonus of providing dinner time entertainment to Mommy, Daddy, Big Sister and any of the assorted dinner guests who happen to sit down with us. Tomato based sauces made with my home-canned tomatoes are greatly favored, but she also likes vegetable pastas with creamy cheese sauces too. Asparagus and spinach are great in her book if noodles are involved, and peas taste better when mixed into macaroni and cheese, a dish which we have renamed “Cheez n’ Peaz.” Kat loves her Cheez ‘n’ Peaz, although in typical toddler fashion, while she may eat peas with gusto one day, she may pick them out of her bowl and set them aside the next day.

That toddler tendency to eat a food one moment and refuse it the next is probably one of the must frustrating aspects to feeding a child of Kat’s age. Some kids grow out of it by three, others continue in this irritating and confounding behavior until they are eight or nine years old. I think that the best way to deal with it is to not make a fuss about it, and if a kid doesn’t eat one thing, offer something else–within reason–and then offer the once offensive food again in a day or so. Be laid back about it, though, because in my experience, the more attention paid to the behavior by a parent, whether positive, in the form of offering a dizzying array of food choices all of which the child may refuse just for the pleasure of feeling their own personal power, or negative, in the form of berating, cajoling, coercing or otherwise making a divisive issue of food, the more likely the child is to continue in the behavior, because they are rewarded by this attention.

When Kat refuses to eat something, I just shrug and offer something else. If she doesn’t eat that, I figure she probably isn’t really hungry. Most kids will not starve themselves, so I don’t worry–I just keep an eye on what she eats over a period of days, instead of looking at what she is eating or not eating this minute. When I look at it that way, I find that she does eat a varied, nutritive diet, it just may not seem so at every meal when she pulls the bizzaro toddler trick of only eating one specific food for a meal or two.

That is my best advice to parents–take the long view when it comes to what your kids eat. Pay attention to the big trends, not the momentary whims. I find that Kat’s appetite fluctuates depending on her growth patterns, her physical activity levels and her, uh, digestive status. (In other words, if she hasn’t had a bowel movement in several days, it stands to reason that she might not eat much. Little bellies can only hold so much, and sometimes room needs to be made before a meal can go down.)

And when the momentary whims get you down, try and shrug your shoulders and ignore them. Feed them a varied diet in as calm and matter-of-fact way possible, and while you are at it, let them taste what you are eating, even if you think it is too spicy and they won’t like it. (Within reason–no steak tartare or raw fish for babies, please!) They may surprise you and love it–Kat still adores all sorts of curries, and as you can see the allium-laden Kiss Kiss Bang Bang really was a big hit with my little highchair dweller.

Let toddlers see you and other adults and kids enjoying food, making appreciative noises and sounds. Let them experience laughter and conversation at the table, maybe even a tiny drop of wine from your fingertip, and offer a lick of garlic butter from your spoon. Start them on the sensual pleasures of food early and you will eventually have a life-long food lover on your hands.

In other words, make food fun, not a fight, not just for your kids’ sake, but for your own as well.

Can Urban Farming Help Alleviate A Looming Food Crisis?

Americans need to go back to the land.

I don’t mean this in a 1960’s, leaving the city for a commune in the country, complete with goat milk, wheat grass and sprouted lentil loaves, kind of way.

I think we all need to get back to the land wherever we are.

We need to touch whatever bit of earth we have at our disposal, whether that means a planter on the deck, a grassy front yard, or an empty lot at the end of the block. We need to do more than touch that earth–we need to till it, plant seeds, tend them and watch them grow into food for ourselves, our families and our neighbors.

America used to be a nation of farmers, and we need to remember that and return to our roots.

Why?

Because of rising food prices, and looming threats of food shortages.

Because of lack of availability of fresh vegetables and fruits among the urban poor.

Because of soaring obesity rates, and lowered nutrition among the country’s poor.

Because eating locally is good for us and the environment, and our local economy.

And because we need to remember who we are, as a nation.

Gandhi once said, “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves,” and he is right. As Americans have turned away from the land, as we have allowed farms to be turned into strip malls and condominiums, as we have turned away from self-reliance and embraced consumerism as a lifestyle, we have forgotten the soul of our nation. We have forgotten what once made us strong, and that was a deep connection to the earth, to our homes, to our neighbors.

We need to rebuild that connection, and in doing so, we will be better able to weather the coming economic recession, high food prices and possible food shortages which loom over our future lives.

And the thing is–gardening and growing at least some of our vegetables and fruits–can be accomplished anywhere. You don’t have to have forty acres and a mule, or even one acre and a rototiller. A small urban yard will do, or a series of containers on a rooftop or balcony or a vacant lot.

Urban agriculture is finally coming back into its own in the US, after last being seen as a real movement during WWII with the “Victory Garden” campaign when rooftops and backyards were planted in cities and larger gardens were dug in the country by people from all walks of life.

The New York Times features an article on the growing trend of urban farming in the US where individuals not only grow food for their families on vacant lots, but also grow enough vegetables to sell to their neighbors. Not only does this bring in extra cash for people in poor neighborhoods, it also brings much appreciated fresh food to people who have little choice in where to shop.

The Times reports that co-ops have been formed, CSA;s have gone urban and restaurants have taken to buying produce grown within their own cities.

Of course, none of this is new–there have always been urban farmers. What is new is the idea that urban farming in the US could help to substantially feed citizens while also boosting local income and microeconomic systems. (Cities in the UK and other countries are also embracing urban agriculture as well, but I am primarily talking about the US for now.)

For proof that city-based agricultural ventures, from backyard gardens to community gardens to full-fledged urban market farms, can produce a significant amount of food in modern times, we need to look beyond the US, however. We need to examine the current urban agricultural system of Cuba.

Cuba’s successful experiment in urban agriculture started as a means to feed Cuba without relying on food imports after trade embargoes caused food shortages. Currently, urban farms occupy around 86,000 acres, and in the past few years, these farms have produced 3.4 million tons of food annually. Urban farms grow 90 percent of the fresh vegetables for the city of Havana alone.

Considering that these government-led and supported urban agriculture programs only started a few decades ago, their success is astonishing, and to me, enticing.

Just think of what Americans could do with our abundance of land, in comparison to the smaller acreage available to Cuba.

Why don’t we do it then? Why don’t we all start planting our own “Victory Gardens” again, and take the time to learn how to grow our own food, and take back a measure of self-reliance once more? Why don’t we claim our own victories–against poverty, against processed foods, against corporate control, against our own complacency–and relearn what we have forgotten: how to dig the earth and tend the soil.

Let’s join other Americans and do it, in big ways and small ways.

Let’s remember ourselves.

Author’s Note: Our backyard is finally being terraced this year, and the first things we will plant in it will be asparagus crowns, strawberries and a bunch of annual vegetables. The ornamentals–the flowers and shrubs, and hopefully fruit trees–will wait for next year. The food comes first.

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang: Spaghetti with Ramps, Green Garlic and Goat Feta

I bet you are wondering why I called this recipe “Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang,” right?

Well, it has nothing to do with either James Bond, the movie with Robert Downey Jr. or the Torchwood episode of the same name.

It has to do with the nature of the recipe I am presenting.

This pasta sauce is such an explosion of strong flavors, that if you were to kiss someone after eating it, you would make a big bang of an impression upon them.

And probably not in a good way.

So, this title is a warning of sorts. If you are in a kissing mood after you eat this spaghetti, I suggest that you choose your target kissee wisely. The best strategy would be to feed your intended recipient of the kiss some of the pasta first, so that the two of you are equally armed when it comes to the strong flavors and aromas left in the mouth. The combination of caramelized onions, ramps, green garlic and goat feta is powerful–delicious, sensual and delightful, really, but you don’t really want to share it second hand. (Well, unless you know someone like me who thinks the aroma and flavor of garlic is just about the sexiest ever….) And the combination is strong enough, thanks to the ramps, that it will defeat the liberal application of Listerine, Altoids and Crest. (On the other hand, personally, I’d sooner kiss someone who has just eaten a raw garlic clove than someone who has washed his or her mouth out with Listerine. Listerine tastes like someone has been licking a hospital floor. Ick.)

So, the title is a warning, but it is also an advertisement for those who love big bangin’ flavors–if you love the sweetness of caramelized onions, the tang of garlic, the heady aroma of ramps, and the sword-sharp bite of goat feta, then this recipe is for you. Take all of those flavors, add the sweetness of tomatoes and the heat of a little bit of chilies, and you have a great, quick sauce for spaghetti that will not only chase the blues and blahs away, but will chase away anyone else you might want to be rid of as well.

The truth is–you can leave out the ramps if you must–especially if you have no way of getting them. Just add more green garlic or add some regular garlic to the sauce. Or just plain old leave it out. You can also forgo the butter in the recipe and just use olive oil instead, but I find that a bit of butter in addition to the olive oil softens the flavor of all of the alliums, and adds a certain richness to the sauce, making it cling deliciously to the spaghetti. You can also leave out the optional teaspoon of anchovy paste in order to make this dish vegetarian–the anchovy paste adds a great deal of umami flavor, but it isn’t necessary. I just think it perfectly rounds out the sauce and ties the different allium tastes together into a cohesive whole.

As for the goat feta, I was lucky enough to get some of the first batch of Chris Schmiel’s (of Integration Acres) home made feta from his goats. You may not be so lucky, so if you can’t get goat feta, use whatever feta you can get–the creamiest, tangiest, most sharp feta you can find.

One more thing–I used home-canned tomatoes and marinara sauce from last summer’s abundant tomato crop, but you can just as easily use store-bought canned tomatoes and jarred marinara. In fact, this would be a quick way to jazz up jarred sauce–just use the highest quality sauce you can buy, one without high fructose corn syrup, so that you get the truest, strongest tomato flavor possible.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Spaghetti

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter (optional–you could use another tablespoon of olive oil instead)
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fresh green garlic, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
1 teaspoon anchovy paste (optional)
1 teaspoon or to taste chili garlic paste–I used my homemade paste (or use freshly chopped chilies or a few drops of hot sauce)
1/4 cup dry sherry or dry red wine
1 pint canned tomatoes
1 quart marinara sauce
1 cup thinly sliced green garlic–dark green tops only
1 cup thinly sliced ramp leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pound thin spaghetti, cooked al dente
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

Method:

Heat olive oil and butter in a heavy-bottomed skillet until the butter foams. Add the onions and sprinkle with the salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions turn a deep golden brown. Add the garlic and continue stirring and cooking until the garlic turns golden and the onions are a deep reddish brown. add the pepper flakes, anchovy paste, and chili garlic paste, and cook, stirring for another minute. Add the sherry or red wine, and cook, stirring, until the alcohol boils off.

Add the tomatoes, and cook, stirring, until the juice is boiled off and the tomatoes begin to break down. Chop at the tomatoes with a spoon until they break down, and add the marinara sauce and keep cooking until the sauce thickens slightly. Toss in the green garlic tops and ramp leaves, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Cook until the leaves wilt slightly, then add drained spaghetti to the pot and toss until the pasta is well coated.

Swirl pasta onto serving bowls and top with crumbled feta cheese and serve immediately. (Serves six as a main course with salad.)

Upgrades, Snafus and Other Blog Stuff

We are working on upgrading Wordpress for Tigers & Strawberries. That is the good news.

The bad news is that SpamKarma2, the spam filter that keeps the porn, ads and other bullshit spam comments off my blog has decided to somehow blacklist ME, so I have not been able to comment on my own blog in about a week or so. This is frustrating. It may be that someone hacked my account and added my IP address to the blacklist on spam karma, but Zak can’t really figure out what happened.

So, here is the deal. I’ll keep T&S up and running while he works on it, but if you post a comment and you want me to answer it–send it to me in email as well. Because for right now, I cannot really contribute to conversations via the comments threads.

And, while I am at it, here is a question for the readers–what kinds of posts would you like to see on T&S in the future? Work has taken a lot of my time, and Kat and the rest of the family, of course, takes up a lot of time, so I am running out of ideas as to what to write about. So, if anyone has any suggestions, I would be pleased to hear from you.

Thanks for everything, and have a nice Sunday!

Easy Artful Plate Design

One of the things I like best about working in a restaurant is that it simply isn’t enough to make food that tastes great–it also has to look good.

Everyone eats first with their eyes (and arguably, with their noses), long before the first morsel passes their lips. And there are few things more satisfying to a server or chef than to see guests’ eyes light up when beautiful plates are set before them, steam writhing upwards in an enticing dance, carrying delectable aromas forth.

People become excited when they see food that is colorful arranged on a plate in an artful, thoughtful manner. The greatest chefs present delicate morsels arrayed like sparkling gems on pristine plates painted with vibrant colored sauces. This sort of presentation is an art form, with architectural elements made of edibles, stacked layers of different textures and flavors combined for gustatory as well as visual impact, and requires a great deal of skill that is often beyond the abilities of most home cooks.

And while I am capable of such presentation, and appreciate it, it is not how I choose to present my own creations. It is too fussy for me, and as beautiful as I find the works of Eric Ripert to behold (I still haven’t tasted his food, although Morganna, lucky wench, has and she tells me that his dishes are as heavenly on the tongue as they are delightful to the eyes), my own aesthetic is informed by the food and cooking I grew up with on the farm in West Virginia. I guess you can take the girl out of the hills, but the hillbilly still remains, deep in her heart, expressing itself in small, unexpected ways.

My own culinary aesthetic is for ethnic home cooking–multi-cultural soul food, if you will–presented simply, but beautifully, in a way that is respectful to the cultures which originated it, while still allowing playful personal experimentation.

And when presenting these comforting foods simply, that doesn’t mean I just slop some stuff on a plate and call it done–I like to make my food, particularly at Salaam look just as good as it tastes. But, I am not going to sit and build a stack of dinner on a plate, either, because I want my guests to be comfortable with their food. In many cases at Salaam, when we present the foods of the Silk Road, we are already venturing outside of many of our guests comfort zone, by giving them unfamiliar ingredients and dishes from places many of them may not have ever heard of, or thought about at all.

In such cases, it is best to give the guests something to hold on to–a touchstone that they can relate to. And so my more casual, but still beautiful, plate design is that touchstone. I don’t give them food that they may have to puzzle out how to eat it, I just present them with food that is about what they would get in someone’s home, only I have gussied it up a bit.

There are some principles to my seemingly loosey-goosey method of casual plate design. I like a balance in colors, which you can see in both of these Thai coconut milk curries. The yellow curry in the first picture has primarily warm colors from the turmeric-colored curry, the pink shrimp, the tomatoes, mangoes and sweet red peppers, but this is balanced with the fresh cool shades of green from the cilantro, chives and snow pea pods. The white rice and plate make a nice, neutral canvas for the brilliant colors of the ingredients–and of course, steamed jasmine rice is the traditional starch served with the curry.

Contrasting or complementary colors make a plate pop–that is something to keep in mind. Look at the red pepper and tomato on top of the pile of snow peas in the first photograph. They look yummy, not only because they are yummy, but because red and green are complementary colors–opposites on the color wheel. Red, yellow and blue are primary colors; orange, green and purple are secondary colors made of a combination of two primary colors. Green is a combination of yellow and blue–what makes it complementary to red is that it lacks red in its makeup. Orange is blue’s complement and purple is yellow’s. For plate designs that really stand out–try and use complementary colors next to or on top of each other.

Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel make for a harmonious look. This is exemplified in the second photograph–the warm colors red, orange and yellow colors abound in this plate, making it all harmonious. The only cool color is green from the cilantro and lime slice, although the lime slice is a yellowish green, making it a warmer green than the cooler, bluer cilantro. The use of primarily warm colors makes this plate look happy, harmonious and cheerful, and the deep, cooler green of the cilantro pops in contrast to the reds, yellows and oranges, while the lime just fits right in with them.

I also like to use both symmetry and asymmetry in my plate design. As you can see in both photographs, symmetry is very pleasing to the human eye. Look at how the shrimp are arrayed in a circle, all pointing in the same direction, so the curves of the shrimp give a sense of motion to the composition. This radial symmetry exists in nature all over the place–look at daisies and other compound flowers, or the markings on a sand dollar. I like echoing the natural world on my plates–it is a harmonious design that is calming to the human psyche.

The lemon and lime slices twisted and placed carefully atop each other in the second photograph of the red curry chicken also echoes the radial symmetry of a flower. These are sprinkled with brilliant scarlet pepper flakes to give a contrast in color which reminds me of the freckles in the throat of a lily blossom.

Asymmetry comes in with the yellow curry. Note that I put two chive leaves in the center. They are of differing lengths, and while they stick up from the plate and offer a sense of height, they are not the same height. They also point in the same basic direction, so they introduce an element of asymmetry into the otherwise almost perfectly symmetrical design. This adds and element of movement, and it draws the eye toward the center of the plate where the beautiful emerald green snow peas are piled in a casual, imperfect conical shape.

On the red curry plate, you can see I tucked a sprig of cilantro under the citrus “flower” to once again add a sense of height and a random, asymmetrical element.

These casual “rules” of plate design can be used by any home cook to make their foods look better. And, if a dish looks better, I have found that it often tastes better–because, as I noted at the beginning of this post–people eat first with their eyes, then their noses, and finally with their mouths.

So there we are. Think about a balance of colors, a sense of movement and height and the pleasant effect of symmetry contrasted with the surprising element of a touch of asymmetry when you present your guests at home with a delicious dinner. You may find that with a little bit of thought and care that your food will not only look better, it will taste better too.