Shiitake Fever

I'm going to love a shiitake regardless of how it's prepared. Whether it's raw, sauteed, dried out and then reconstituted, I don't care. As long as you didn't burn it, I will eat it. There's something so comforting in the natural botanical flavor of the raw shiitake, and when you purchase the dried ones it's amazing how concentrated their umami flavor becomes.

I was happy to find out that Jonathan Tescher over at Sparta Farms is just as enthusiastic about the noble shiitake. He's started cultivating them, along with lion's mane. Lion's mane is a lesser known mushroom but I can assure you that it is delicious as well, and nothing to be intimidated by. It's the white mushroom in the middle of the picture to the left. I've never tried them raw, but they are great just sauteed up with some olive oil, garlic and thyme. I talked to Jonathan and he mentioned that some Yale students discovered a type of fungi that eats plastic! A quick trip to the market in East Atlanta not only yielded some delicious mushrooms, it also offered hope for humanity. Glad I stopped by!

Since I really prefer the shiitakes raw I decided to make a quick little salad. It took about 4 minutes to make. Here's a quick overview of what ended up in it: Spinach, julienned poblano pepper, purple basil, thin shaved shiitake and red onion, confit tomatoes, fish sauce, olive oil, rice wine vinegar and a generous helping of sesame seeds.

Confit tomatoes might sound complicated, but it's not. All you do is poke a little hole at the top of the tomato and then heat a little bit of olive oil up on the stove. Put the tomatoes in it. As soon as it gets hot cut the heat and let them sit for a little while. Once they are cool enough to handle just pop the skins right off of them. It would be nice to add some fresh thyme sprigs and garlic to this as well but I didn't think about it until I'd already eaten the salad! Oh well, there's always next time. By the way this is a great way to boost the flavor of not so delicious tomatoes. And one more tip from the kitchen, it's a really bad idea to store your tomatoes in the fridge. Once a tomato drops down below 55 degrees it gets really mealy textured! That doesn't apply to the confit tomatoes though. Now that they're cooked they should be stored in the fridge.

If you want to make your own shiitake salad make sure to stop by the East Atlanta Farmers Market on Thursdays from 4 to 8 pm. Check out www.farmeav.com for more info.

Technique...

When it comes to preparing food, it's all in the technique. I've spent the last 13 years of my life trying to seek out the best techniques in regards to cooking. Between culinary school and the badass chefs I've gotten to work for I've seen a lot. They say there's a million ways to skin a cat, but I have noticed a symmetry in the method of the masters. Which led me to believe that yes, there are a million ways to skin a cat, but only one of those is the right way. So I want you to look at this picture:

I could launch into a 3 hour long debate with myself about how and why I took these 3 simple ingredients: a hamlin orange, turkish un-sulphured apricots and fresh mint, and left them alone... until it was time to eat them. Here's the issue, and this is something that I am consistently confronted with as I try to make my own decisions about how I feel about food: All my training tells me that the orange segments you looked at should have been supremes, meaning that the pithe (the white flesh) should have been removed. Here's a great example of one:

The reason is because it has a slight bitterness to it. It's a valid point. And I have to admit, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can correctly supreme citrus, because most young cooks out there do a really shitty job at it. It takes finesse and attention to detail. I really enjoy a job well done, and I appreciate the merits of having good knife skills. It makes me sad to find that someone was proud enough of this terrible supreme to publish it online:

But what's best for the citrus, the salad, and more importantly, my health? While standing in my kitchen tonight I had nothing but the ghost of my previous employers poofing onto my shoulder, telling me to cut the damn fruit and do it well. But I am in my kitchen now, and I have to decide what I want to do. And I want the pithe. First of all, that's where most of the nutrients lie. Second of all, I like the slight bitterness. I have matured beyond the palate of a four year old, and I enjoy the slightly bitter flavors of some foods. I also find that it helps balance the acid in citrus. And the apricots are as close to candy as you can get without eating sugar, so a little bitterness isn't going to hurt.

But what about presentation? It does count for a lot in life. My answer to that is that I love the way the whole segment of orange looks. It's complete, whole, un-manipulated for the most part. I even like the fact that one of the mint leaves has a blemish on it. It's nature. It happens.

I think the only way to become great is to learn from the best and then define your own opinion about things. Learn everything you can, and then make an informed decision. It's not that what I learned was wrong. It's just that I'm viewing the same thing from a different set of eyes, that have different priorities, a different viewpoint. The orange is really the tip of the iceberg here. I care way more about nutrition in regards to cooking than any good chef does or probably should. But here's the thing: it's my own idea, and it isn't what everybody else is doing; and as far as I know, those are two essential ingredients when it comes to being a future leader in your field, a trendsetter.

Mess Free Pomegranate!

I haven't posted anything lately because I'm reading The House of Mirth, and Edith Wharton is so eloquent it makes me feel inadequate about my own writing skills. I haven't had the audacity to even write down a recipe! But I've wanted to share my tip for preparing pomegranates, and I realized how fitting a subject it is considering my literary taste du jour. Wharton said, "Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well dressed till we drop…" And nothing will make you dingy and poorly dressed quicker than cleaning a pomegranate. But I've got a simple technique that will save your clothes. Say goodbye to juice-speckled shirts!

How To Clean A Pomegranate:

1 pomegranate
1 bowl of water
1 small container
1 knife
1 cutting board

Cut the pomegranate in quarters.

Submerge the quarters in the water.

Pick the seeds away from the flesh, keeping the pomegranate under water.

Put cleaned seeds in the container and enjoy!

Wild Salad

Here's a short post about a really delicious salad I made today from some great stuff I had in the fridge. It took about 2 minutes to make, and it was delicious and creative enough to serve to guests, but I enjoyed eating it all by myself before taking a hike up Stone Mountain.

About a handful of baby organic arugula
About a handful of organic dandelion greens
1/2 avocado
1 sheet Nori seaweed
1 raw brazil nut
parmesano-reggiano
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 lemon

Wash all greens, tear dandelion leaves.
Dice avocado and mix with greens.
Drizzle with olive oil, lemon juice, and add salt and fresh cracked pepper.
Tear sheets of nori and sprinkle on top of salad.
Grate parmesan and brazil nut on top (I used a microplane).
Enjoy!



This salad is packed full of nutrients. I'm going to break it down by ingredient to tell you some of the nutritional benefits that can be gained from eating this salad.

• Dandelion greens (especially raw) do wonders for your liver because it helps you detoxify. All greens are high in fiber which helps regulate blood pressure and blood sugar, and is also an aid in weight loss.
• I think of Nori as a sort of delicious vitamin, it's packed full of valuable trace minerals and I love to just eat it plain for a snack. Don't forget to toast the Nori if it get's a little soft!
• Brazil nuts are considered a "super-food," packed full of minerals including selenium, manganese and copper.
• Avocado is great for supporting eye health and has a great amount of potassium and folate.
• Parmesan has tons of calcium and protein in it making it a great addition to any salad.
• Lemons are very high in vitamin C, helping to ward off those wintertime chills; in addition, because it's antibacterial it can help make raw foods even safer.
• Monounsaturated fats such as olive oil are crucial for proper brain function. Olive oil also helps to regulate blood sugar levels!

I hope you enjoy this salad, and I'd love to answer any questions or read your comments! Thanks for reading!

Supper Clubbing

Sometimes your best work comes right after your worst. After I shuttered my chicken stand a mere 4 months after it opened I had the feeling that whatever I do next better be damn near perfect. I didn't feel like laboring over another restaurant, though. I've been having a great time just cooking at home, feeling very inspired by the intimacy of only cooking for people I know and care about. It's great because no one harps on me about the profit margin, and when I am not bound to a budget I can actually source the ingredients that I want to cook with. I'm not talking about white Alba truffles or Iranian caviar (although, the latter of the two I certainly wouldn't mind getting my hands on), I'm talking about ingredients like foraged greens and flowers from A Crack In the Sidewalk, goat cheese from Decimal Place Farms, and pork loins from Riverview Farms. The cost of these products makes them unattainable when trying to design a 4.95 dinner for your walk-up chicken stand. That's why in the end we failed, because I couldn't keep my values and be successful in that venture. I rather die a pauper with my ideals than die a rich man with no soul. Therefor, I'm on to the next venture in my life, the supper club.

The creative energy that has to get poured into a successful supper club is enthralling. When I come up with a theme I find myself becoming totally submerged in the night several weeks before it takes place. I listen to the music playlist incessantly until I know it's perfect. I scour the city looking for the right ingredients, usually running me far and wide like Jacques Cartier looking for new waters to fish out of. My to-do lists have lists that have lists that have lists. It takes well-planned out timing, tons of help from friends, and certain scrappiness that can only be attributed to my years growing up in the Georgia woods. When I want burlap for a table runner I can't go spend $6 a yard on the stuff, so I have to find a place to get it for free. Fortunately, when I needed it was right around the time Home Depot had a ton of it draped over the christmas trees they were shipping. A $5 tip got me all the burlap I could fit in my car! And when I wanted place mats for a Moroccan themed room, fabric samples from a Last Chance thrift store worked perfectly, at about a dollar per 20 pieces!

It takes fluidity, flexibility and inspiration to pull it all together. I can't think of a time I've had more fun. By the time the big night arrives I already feel like I've gotten such a huge reward out of the work that I've done, feeding my guests is just the icing on the cake. Not to say it isn't slightly scary though. It feels just like that moment when you're about to go on stage. The moment where you're in too deep to back down and you wonder why you ever agreed to do this, or even worse, why you ever came up with the idea in the first place. But then you realize that things are going right and you find yourself having a good time. When the last guests have left you forget how scared you were and you find yourself announcing plans to do another party a couple weeks later. Why? Because 3 weeks of planning and fun shouldn't be dwarfed by 20 minutes of self doubt. Next thing I know, the invitation is made, the announcement has been posted, and I'm on the phone with my farmer buddies, figuring out the menu.

Garlic Tea

I believe whole-heartedly that food has medicinal properties. Growing up with a holistic doctor in the house definitely helped plant this seed in my brain. Luckily that seed was watered and nurtured by many of my mentors throughout my career. Finally, I am coming into a space where it is up to me to continue my education. The little snippets of wisdom I have picked up randomly throughout the years are no longer enough to feed this beast. I want to know all about foraging, medicinal properties of herbs and foods and any other sort of information that can help me to heal myself and the people I care about.
One such snippet of wisdom I picked up years ago has prevailed as the dominant evidence in my mind as to why food can be medicine. At the time I was working too much and subsisting off a diet of coffee, alcohol, medjool dates and parmesan. I was young and invincible. Well, not entirely invincible. I developed a terrible cold that I just couldn't shake. I was taking olive leaf extract and drinking ginger tea, but it wouldn't go away. A waiter at the restaurant I was spending 12 hours a day at told me he could make me feel better, but he said that his cure was really disgusting and I would hate it. For some reason that made me think I should go for it. Before I could back out he crushed 2 cloves of garlic and steeped them in hot water. He added a copious amount of honey and told me to hold my nose and drink. I did as he said and the strangest thing happened. I got this huge rush that started in my toes and zipped all the way up into my brain. It was kind of like smoking your first Newport. For a few seconds I was high, but then it was gone. And within a day or two, so was my cold. I was now a disciple. Any time I start to feel like my lymph nodes are swelling I make myself some garlic tea. I haven't had a serious cold since. It seems like every winter I end up having to make it for a coworker or a friend who's fighting a cold, and they always agree that it helps them feel better. The only thing that's been disappointing to me about the tea in the five years since I learned how to make it is that I've never been able to get that rush again…

Garlic Tea
2 cloves garlic
1 cup water
1 tsp wild honey

Crush the garlic with the flat side of a knife on a cutting board. Allow the garlic to sit for 5 minutes. Now steep with hot water, covered, for 4 minutes. Strain the garlic out and add the honey. Drink and feel better.

Allicin and diallyl sulfides have been identified as the compounds that produce the health benefits in garlic. Allicin is the stronger of the two, but tends to break down quickly especially when exposed to heat. It's actually the byproduct of the amino acid alliin and the enzyme alliinase, which are combined when garlic is crushed or chopped. It is volatile and has a very short lifespan, which is why it is important to chop your garlic fresh, and to let it sit for a couple minutes before you use it so that the allicin might be created. Allicin and diallyl sulfide are so useful because they are antimicrobial, which accounts for why garlic is such a powerful weapon against both bacterial and viral infections. Because it is a powerful weapon it should be treated with respect. Garlic is a blood thinner and should not be taken in high doses before surgery. It should also be avoided if you are allergic to it.

I get this feeling of validation when I learn that the everyday foods I've been incorporating into my diet since I was a child are so good for me. It's not surprising that our food supply does more than provide us with calories, we have evolved together into a very symbiotic relationship. Food heals and nourishes us, making it possible for us to survive; and we cultivate and spread it's seeds, simultaneously ensuring it's survival. I don't believe that scientist will ever be able to make a pill that produces a healthy person, because we can study for centuries to come and still not understand on a scientific level the complex relationship that has evolved between ourselves and our food. Food science doesn't impress me at all, and I hardly pay attention to it. It seems to me that food science is most commonly driven by convenience. That's why all food scientist have managed to do with garlic is chop it up and put it in oil; which by the way, nullifies its medicinal properties and makes it an anaerobic environment that's ripe for the spread of botulism when left at room temperature. It seems that indigenous diets are Man's most coherent attempt at understanding nutrition. The fact that our ancestors believed in eating a variety of clean, whole foods and were so much healthier than we are today makes me think that they are the ones we should look to for the answers we seek. Everyone from the Pharaohs of Egypt to the Romans understood that garlic is a wonderful plant with medicinal as well as flavor enhancing properties. I guess I'm saying that I trust the foods inscribed on the Egyptian pyramids a hell of a lot more than I trust the United States food pyramid.

Essentials

It takes barely any time to cook dinner at my house. This isn't because I have a freezer loaded with Swanson meals and frozen pizzas, or cupboards jammed with instant rice. It's because I have an arsenal of healthy, nutrient-dense ingredients that allow me the versatility to cook quick, tasty meals. The best advice I can give to anyone trying to eat healthier is this: Don't buy junk food. If it's not in your cupboards you can't eat it!
The U.S.D.A. has released a statement saying that produce in our country is losing nutrients. When I read that it made me think about how all food is not created equal. I want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of what I'm eating, because empty calories lead to obesity. When your body is nourished the cravings disappear!
Here's a list of ingredients I like to keep on hand, and a little something about what makes them so great.

1.Butter: Real butter. Preferably from a local creamery. It's chalked full of vitamins a, d and e as well as potassium, phosphorus and calcium. Why should you ditch the margarine? It's a hydrogenated fat that your body doesn't know how to process and it is completely void of nutrients.








2. Brown Rice: I cook it in the rice cooker every time. Sometimes I cook it in chicken stock if I have it on hand. I usually add a little bit of butter, a clove of garlic and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. Brown rice hasn't been stripped of all it's nutrients, and it tastes just as good as (if not better than) white rice. And the beauty of the rice cooker is that you don't have to pay too much attention to it. Just set it and come back in 20 minutes to beautifully cooked rice!
3. Garlic: I pick up a fresh head of garlic every time I go grocery shopping. The best way to use it is to peel the clove and then crush it with the back of your knife. Let it sit for about 5 minutes because this allows two of the enzymes present in garlic to react with each other in order to provide maximum health benefits. It's a strong anti-viral and anti-cancer food.

4.Honey: This has to be local! Local honey is a great weapon against allergies. It is also important to support local bee keepers! I rarely use sugar at home. I substitute with honey whenever possible. This is an easy way to add nutrients to your diet. Sugar is full of empty, useless calories. Honey is an antioxidant that has B vitamins, iron and manganese.






5. Cold-expeller Pressed Oils: I always have three oils in my cupboard; grapeseed oil when I'm looking for a neutral flavor in a vinaigrette or when I need to fry something; olive oil for marinating and salads; and sesame oil (quickly becoming a favorite) for it's unique flavor. Most cheap vegetable oils are rancid before you even pop the cap because they are extracted at a temperature that is too high. This causes the production of more free radicals in your body and weakens your cell walls.
6. Medjool Dates: I always keep a package of these in the fridge. Sure, they are ridiculously expensive. But you can't imagine how many times these little things have kept me from driving to the grocery store in the middle of the night for ice cream! Considering the fact that it's a healthy choice that manages to completely satisfy my sweet tooth, I think that it's worth it!

7. Redmond Salt: Throw the bleached salt in your cupboards away and switch to a salt with a high mineral content. My favorite brand is Redmond. It's speckled with 60+ trace minerals, it's completely unrefined and 100 percent natural.








8. Fresh Fruits and Vegetables: I get these locally whenever possible because I know that the fresher my produce is, the higher its nutrient content. Because I usually know the person who is growing my food I don't have to worry about the organic labeling so much.

Winter Tip: There are a great variety of root vegetables available now. There are potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, rutabagas, celeriac, carrots, and more. The easiest way to prepare these tubers is to roast them whole in the oven. This actually concentrates the natural sugars and leaves you with a sweeter tasting product. Scrub them, pierce them with a fork a couple times, wrap in foil and put them in a 350 degree oven until they are tender. When they cool a little bit you can slice them open. Add a little salt, butter or even sour cream and you've got a delicious meal; or you can peel them and puree them with some heavy cream for a tasty alternative to mashed potatoes!