(y)our food choices

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We cook a lot in our tiny kitchen and love it! Baked bread, simmering soups and homemade pizzas are just a few of the staples in our apartment. We are constantly experimenting with recipes and love a challenge. We’re not Iron Chefs but we do respect the men and women who are and their dedication to the craft. We’re just two men who are trying to get back into the simple ways of life. We’re all about farmer’s markets and grass fed beef. We believe that the food we eat is sacred, even if we are not of the religious state of mind, and that with every bite we take or every drink we consume we can all make a difference, for good or not so good. We hope you enjoy reading about what we are eating, peruse the pictures we take of our food, and tell us about what your eating and drinking. In the future we will be linking this blog to a new blog called Your Food Choices where we hope to get some lively discussions about food and how it affects us all. Cheers! Steve & Jason

Burdock Root

That I was mesmerized by the variety of produce on my first visit to our neighborhood veggie market is an understatement. We moved to San Francisco in the mid-90s, well after the folks along the coasts had revived the local farmers’ market and a broader market for fresh seasonal produce had emerged. But the revolution hadn’t quite reached the Salt Lake City masses by the time we left Utah and I simply didn’t know that such a variety of fruits and vegetables was known to so many people and that city folk cook as many of them as they do. I was embarrassed.

My more experienced eyes have gotten better at scanning the bushy beds of red and green leaf lettuces, chicories and tender greens. I’ve grown increasingly enamored of the contrasts in texture and color I find throughout the market. I’m relieved to know the differences in tastes among the mustards, collards and cresses. In the midst of those radicchio heads, rainbow chard and kale lay dark, stick-like interlopers. Dirty, brittle burdock roots are inexplicably nestled among big, dramatic leaves. The shape of the tender root leaves a mean impression – slender, bark-y, impossibly straight and remarkably long – but these are not wooded sticks or twigs. A member of the daisy family and related to dandelion and chicory, the burdock in my market is essentially nothing more than the tap root of a biennial weed.

Northern Asians and Europeans have been eating it for ages and it seems, to my surprise, to be fairly ubiquitous. The Japanese, who call it gobo, seem to like it a lot – they stew it, stir fry it, make sushi and medicinal teas from it. It’s put to good use in stews in England and France, though less frequently these days. No doubt my pioneer ancestors ate it or made medicines from it wherever they found it along the trail westward. A quick search of the cookbooks on my kitchen shelf didn’t offer much on this pedestrian old-world vegetable, but a recent Google search for burdock recipes produced an astounding 53,900 hits. Where have I been?

That it is found in most places in the world confirms the genius of burdock’s design. The seed pods stick to everything, especially animal fur, and germinate easily. The name speaks to the seed pods, or burs, of the burdock plant that very likely inspired George de Mestral, the inventor of Velcro® who hatched his remarkable idea after a walk in the field and an evening spent picking burs off his clothes and out of his dog’s coat – a happy accident and a stroke of great luck.

The aisles of the produce market are narrow and on a Sunday afternoon, full of shoppers. Most of us carry plastic grocery store hand baskets. With plenty of bumping and nudging, you learn to say “sorry” and “excuse me” with a pained smile. When I got to the burdock I was reminded of its astonishing length. I knew movement through the aisles would be tricky with a long pointed stick resting on the rim of the basket and shooting outward a good two feet beyond the “bubble” around me and my stuff. That I didn’t think to wait to grab it until I was ready to check-out probably says more than I care to admit about my social skills.

I recommend cutting the roots to manageable lengths before scrubbing them. Having a three foot long spring-loaded pole in the hand makes for some tough cleaning over the sink (the experienced clerk at the market cut my specimen in half for me so I could manage it in on my walk home). I left the skin on half of the root and used my vegetable peeler on the other half. I chopped the unpeeled burdock into chunky rounds and shaved the peeled burdock into long ribbons. Exposed burdock oxidizes quickly. This is a vegetable for which the acidic water bath was created. Boiling seemed the most straight forward preparation and a pot of salted water makes for easy clean up.

Raw, it doesn’t taste like much. But the fragrance of the freshly cut and peeled tuber reminds me of other pungent roots like parsnips and rutabagas. I gave my sample a simple boil because I wanted to get to the foundational flavors of the food. The cooking liquid has traditionally been poured off and saved for use as a tonic. But I salted the water to season the burdock as it cooked and instead of saving it for soup, I foolishly tossed it. The taste of simply cooked burdock is mild and reminiscent of its artichoke cousin.

I like the name. And I prefer the sound of burdock to gobo, though the latter better places it in its context – a produce market in the middle of a mostly Asian commercial district in San Francisco. Burdock sounds funny and seems to beg for naughty wordplay. This is a plant known by many names – beggar’s buttons (inspired by the clinging pods?); love leaves (a reference to the heart-shaped leaves at the plant’s base); or, my favorite happy major! I mostly like what burdock has come to represent in my evolving appreciation of the bounty of fresh markets and my budding fascination with the simplest of time-tested foods. This is a food I’ll return to often.

Asian Burdock “Noodles”

1 Burdock root, cut into 10 – 12 inch lengths, peeled

6 cups water

1 tbsp sea salt

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp rice vinegar

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Cracked black pepper

Bring water to a boil and add salt. Once water comes to a boil, cut burdock into lengths, and peel with a vegetable peeler. Once clean, use the peeler to make long ribbons of burdock and add them to the boiling water quickly (burdock oxidizes like artichoke and must be cooked shortly after peeling or it will blacken). Boil burdock until tender, approximately 15 – 20 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.

In a bowl, mix the soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil. Add burdock noodles and toss. Plate and finish with fresh cracked black pepper.

A salmon poaching in a court bouillon with artichokes.

To say that it’s the best and worst of times for the Pacific salmon fishery would just be false. It’s actually the worst of times for the fish and the industry and things don’t seem to be getting much better. The reality is that most Pacific salmon fisheries are in crisis and have been for some time. Sure, you can find inexpensive salmon rather abundantly in supermarkets and at your local fish monger, but what you’re finding in the markets isn’t wild. When you’re looking for that next pink filet or steak, be sure the salmon you buy is wild Pacific fish, wild caught Alaskan salmon is best. Why wild Pacific salmon? Because most Atlantic salmon in your local grocery is farmed salmon. And farmed salmon is genetically modified, corn fed, and dyed pink with artificial color to make it look like, well, salmon. The result is a Franken fish devoid of the valuable omega-3 fats we’re learning to be so important to our health. Farmed salmon isn’t good for you and it isn’t good for our oceans. You might as well just go buy a fast food hamburger and call it a day, since it’s effects on the environment are basically analogous to the mess we call the beef industry and that factory burger will probably taste better too.

According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, wild Pacific Coho is an excellent choice for our current fish consumption. So when I saw an Andrionico’s flyer advertising flash frozen wild Pacific Coho salmon for $4.99 per pound I knew I had to have some. The first day I went over to our local Andronico’s the salmon was sold out – no surprise. When I got there the following day I was barely in time to get two large halves of the wonderfully delicate fish. The cost was just shy of $25 for the two very large pieces. A bargain for sure.

I put the fish in our deep freeze hoping to prepare one of them before the sale was over. I wanted to go back and get more of the wonderful creatures but, unfortunately, the sale only lasted a few days. It was probably best since our plans to cook the fish were postponed over and over again. When we finally got to it, we were a little overwhelmed by the task of putting it to use. We love fresh fish but we don’t cook it often. We consulted our cookbooks, scanned the recipes on Epicurious.com and scoured Martha’s site for inspiration. We ultimately settled on two basic preparations, both of which required minimal prep of the fish itself.

Poached salmon on top of a bed of lentils, with a dollop of dijion creme fraiche.

We poached the first piece of salmon in a savory broth containing a mix of aromatic vegetables and herbs. We roughly chopped onion, carrot and celery and tossed it into a stock pot with several cups of water. Then we added sprigs of fresh parsley and thyme, a couple of long pieces of fresh lemon zest, a couple of dried bay leaves, some pink and black peppercorns, some sea salt, and about a cup or so of white wine and brought the pot to a simmer. Meanwhile, the fish had to be scaled and rinsed. The aromatics cooked for about 20 minutes to allow all those flavors to marry. With the heat turned down to barely a simmer, the whole piece of salmon went in for a gentle poaching. It sat in the liquid for approximately 10 to 12 minutes. The result was a luscious, tender, sweet tasting fish that could be used in any number of ways. The poaching liquid We served it atop French lentils and finished with a dollop of Dijon crème fraiche. The recipe for the lentils and crème fraiche is adapted from Serious Eats: French in a Flash: Crispy Salmon with Lentils du Puy and Two-Mustard Crème Fraîche.

Baked salmon with fennel and orange zest, on top of roasted potatoes.

The second piece of salmon was stuffed with fresh sprigs of parsley, thyme and tarragon, then set on a bed of thinly sliced fennel and onions that had been sautéed first and finished with fennel seeds and grated orange zest. Some of the poaching liquid from the previous fish was added to the casserole dish to keep everything moist. Once prepped, it went into a 400 degree oven for approximately 10 to 12 minutes. When the fish was done, we skinned and de-boned it, and it was served with roasted potatoes and the fennel. Finished with a squeeze of lemon and fresh cracked pepper. It made for a tasty and light Sunday supper.