Eat My Florida

Homemade pizza is not nearly as difficult or time consuming as you might think. I use a dough recipe from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice (the best bread book around). Simple process – yeast, water, flour, oil; knead; refrigerate overnight to allow for fermentation and flavor development; proof, sort of; top and bake. In all, enough incredible dough to make 6 respectable Neapolitan-esque pies takes less than 15 minutes of actual effort, although there is a lot of letting it sit around.

The biggest challenge is teasing my elderly and decrepit oven to maintain a respectable heat. The widely known trick is to pre-heat the oven for at least an hour – it takes that long for a pizza stone to come to temp. I also cycle between broil and bake, opening the oven door every so often to trick the thermostat and get the elements heating again.

Below is the reward for my efforts (not to mention the 5 other dough balls waiting in my fridge and freezer). Looks beautiful, even though I used crappy part skim mozzarella and jarred pasta sauce, doesn’t it?

Considering today’s MSG In A Bottle, some people asked me about other ingredients — other than hydrolized protein — that may (or do) contain monosodium glutamate (or at least commercially produced glutamic acid). Here’s a short list — but beware that this is from a strict anti-MSG website.

For more info on umami, here’s a site that is devoted to the sensation, with recipes to boot.

And for anyone who wants a direct line to the Lords Of Chinatown, the original Chinatown Bad Boys, just check out The Notorious MSG!

This weekend’s NYT had an article discussing how if you drink bottled water you basically hate the earth and puppies and such. In the fashion section. Oddly enough, it may take the arbiters of style to fill us with enough guilt to stop the mountains of plastic from growing.

You may have already heard the recent spate of scary stats — 30 billion bottles of non-sparkling water sold to Americans in 2005, only a quarter of the bottles are recycled, in 2006 Americans spent more than $10 billion dollars on the stuff, drank more than 28 gallons each. Maybe the stupidest part of the whole evil business? 40% of bottled water comes from the public water supplies. Yep, filtered tap water (I’m looking at you Aquafina).

Not only should you stop buying the stuff, you should start telling your favorite restaurants to stop carrying it. Unless, of course, you aren’t fashionable and you hate the earth.

I am intrigued and horrified to learn that the Italian Ministry of Health has its own Military Police.

The New Yorker has a great investigation of Italian olive oil forgery, with some fine background about olive oil production.

With all the distrust I have for the government, media and the good intentions of my next-door neighbors, why do I have to start questioning my precious, fruity extra-virgin? There is something to be said for relying solely on the “boca bella” mentioned by biodiesel and olive oil magnate Leonardo Marseglia in the article, but, then again, he may be one of the bad guys.

What’s next? Am I gonna have to start avoiding farmed fish and dog food?

Yeah, the locavore eating trend is hitting its stride, as evidenced by the massive interest in books like Plenty and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (as well as this piece in the Times).

But, as we all know, eating local takes work. The easiest way to take advantage of our local growing season is by joining an area CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm. If you’re new to CSA’s, here’s how they work: Once a year you purchase a share in the farm. That share entitles you to a selection of free produce every week throughout the growing season. You never know what you’ll get until it shows up in your box.

I wrote about Geraldson Farm a little over a year ago, when the Manatee County-owned CSA project was just getting started. Now, the crops are going into the ground and it’s time to pony up for local produce. This week, Geraldson Farm began taking $50 deposits to reserve one of the 180 shares they have available for the next growing season, with the actual share cost predicted to run between $450-500. From November to May, you can pick up your organically-grown fruits and veggies at the farm in northwest Bradenton, or have them delivered to community pick-up sites in Palmetto, St. Petersburg and Sarasota.

In Tampa, there’s always Sweetwater Organic — a Florida CSA pioneer — where memberships run $615 whole/$315 half, but they fill up quick and you need to pick up at the farm (which, admittedly, is a lot of fun). Down in Punta Gorda is Worden Farm ($600/$350); they deliver to the Downtown Sarasota Farmers’ Market.

The great thing about a CSA is that veggies are forced into your life — fresh, local and organic — and you just have to figure out what to do with them. You’ll have to get creative, but you can always email me for a passel of recipes involving kale.

Every time my dad heads back to our ancestral grounds in Ohio, I inevitably end up with a pound or two of Glier’s Goetta. It’s a taste treat that somehow has never made it outside the Ohio-Kentucky corridor, the blend of pork, beef, oats and spices languishing in Midwest obscurity.

Think sausage, but, well, chewy (those oats keep their texture even when ground, processed and fried). This pic shows the classic serving method – thick slices fried crisp on the outside, left creamy and chewy on the inside – but I prefer to mash the stuff in the pan and give every last grain some of that caramelized crunch, then drop a couple of lightly poached eggs right on top, the yolks oozing into the sausage. There’s nothing quite like it.

Can someone tell me why people get so worked up over a little cheval burger, but have no compunctions about downing a pork roast or rib-eye? If it doesn’t bother you, here’s a recipe.

Horse meat is good for you and, according to this Guardian podcast, most of it comes from the US. Equilicious!

Thanks to the USDA and the Almond Board of California, now your almonds may be treated with carcinogenic motorcycle fuel that’s been “banned by both the National Hot Rod and American Motorcycle Racing Associations, where it had been used as a fuel before being deemed too dangerous.”

Well, I’ve guess all that unused hot-rod fuel has to go somewhere. (Thanks to Chow.)

That’s a headline that writes itself. Here’s the piece, thanks to Jaden at Steamy Kitchen.

At the Sarasota Downtown Farmer’s Market this weekend, I found an incredible selection of heirloom tomatoes at the Brown Grove stand. Over a dozen varieties, all grown by a guy in Wauchula, according to the Brown guy. Surprise, surprise. I didn’t think there was anyone in the area with this big a concentration of difficult to find tomato varieties. I packed a big brown bag and headed home for a salad. A little basil, a little balsamic and some good olive oil — a glorious lunch.

Check them out at the Brown stand over the next couple of weeks, because we’ll soon be past the growing season.

Here are the varieties I sampled:

• marmande – fantastically ripe and classic
• pink beauty – tart tomato acidity, very bright flavor
• Mr. Strippy – very meaty with an almost smoky flavor
• green zebra – very balanced flavor that belies the beautiful striped green exterior
• cream sausage – my wife’s favorite, this one contains an almost citrusy sweet-tart blast
• red pear
• pink brandy wine
• God love

The FTC ruled (5-0, no less) that the proposed gobbling of Wild Oats by Whole Foods is a Bad Idea for consumers, for what turns out to be a very questionable reason. Time for an old fashioned Food v. Guvmint throwdown.

The guvmint thinks that organic grocery stores form an entirely separate market than traditional grocery stores, while Whole Foods contends that every single grocery store worth their salt (hah!) has or plans on creating an organic section that looks a heck of a lot like a Whole Foods store. In their minds, that’s stiff competition.

Putting aside the very serious problems of megacorporate organic consolidation, it seems to me that anyone who bothered to visit a Publix or Sweetbay would see their point.

What’s next? Lawsuits galore!

Every week, without fail, I open the fridge and find two milk cartons open.

“Honey, what’s up?” I enquire, knowing the answer.
“I think that one is bad,” she replies, pointing to a carton with a sell-by date fully weeks ahead. I go through the motions of opening the carton and smelling the potentially offensive stuff, but I know the result. It’s not bad. It never is.

Why do we go through this weekly ritual? “How is it possible that they can sell milk a month or two before the expiration?” counters my dairy-paranoid wife. “It isn’t possible. I don’t trust it.”

Well, darling, here’s the answer. Most states require sell-by dates to be 12 days to three weeks after pasteurization in the plant. Ultra-pasteurized milk — like the Stonyfield Organic Low Fat I bought last night at Publix — is either exempt from these rules or have greatly extended time periods for the sell by. Thus, that Stonyfield carton is stamped with July 18, about 7 weeks from now.

Why is some milk pasteurized and some ultra-pasteurized? If the milk is coming from a regional plant associated with regional dairies, then pasteurization is the way most producers do it. It tastes better and is easier for the plant.

Milk that needs to travel is almost invariably ultra-pasteurized. That means that just about every national brand of organic milk I can find is UP, because national organic brands invariably rely on the same type of centralized factory farming that non-organic does. But they sell less, so there are fewer or no regions where sales justify a local dairy operation.

Which brings up the classic argument: is fresh and local better than organic and shipped? Would you rather have hormones and better tasting milk, or no hormones and milk that uses a heck of a lot of fossil fuels to get to you, maybe months after leaving the cow. Pus, or less pus.

Maybe my wife is right. We usually buy organic milk, so the dates stamped on the cartons are often futuristic in quality. The milk hasn’t turned bad by the time my wife has given up on it, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t bad to begin with.

(Thanks to Milk Is Milk for a lot of vital info.)

The news services and national food blogs have been all over the removal of restrictions on imports of Indian mangoes. Supposedly, they are prized for their flavor and quality, and have just started hitting NY and LA and are all the rage with foodie early-adopters. How about here in Tampa?

No Indian fever, here. Cooseman’s Produce doesn’t see how they’ll compete with mangoes grown in this hemisphere — most of our mangoes come from Mexico at about $2 for 10 (wholesale), while Indian mangoes will likely be air-shipped for a while at exorbitant prices ($35 a box in LA). Most of the places I called didn’t even know that they were available, or even that mangoes grew in India. A produce buyer at out local Sysco affiliate said “if anyone starts asking for them, I’ll look into it.”

Woohoo!? Indian mangoes are here?!

Cell phones are deadly killers?

An article in the Sarasota Herald today reminded me why you can forget your fears of Global Climate Destruction. The bees are going to kill us first.

As Einstein put it – “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” A bit of an exaggeration, maybe, since bees are only used to pollinate about a 1/3 of crops here in the US, but it wouldn’t be pretty. And bees are disappearing.

The Tampa Trib talked about the problem a few weeks ago, but the most thorough mass media account — admittedly with an anti-GM spin — was in Der Spiegel. The cause? Parasites, GM plants, or something more nefarious?

Maybe the bees are joining their Africanized cousins for an Apian revolution, televised by the Sci-Fi Channel.

Worried? Soothe that tension with some local honey from Tampa area co-op Eden’s Nectar, but don’t go overboard. Chances are this won’t be the death of us, but it sure is a reminder about the interconnectedness of a world-wide eco-system that our farming practices tend to bully or disregard.