Japanese farmer growing imba vegetables in France

Caught this nice article off yesterday’s The Star, by Gersende Ramboude of AFP. Apparently this man not only taught himself how to grow vegetables from scratch, he also only has 6 clients. And can choose whether to strike a client off his list or not, as well as determine the price, time and frequency of delivery. That’s how good his crops are. And I think we’re just talking about vegetables here – just goes to show the potential of an agriculture in places with the land to support it.

The oldest and healthiest people in the world

An article in the New York Times 2 days ago about Loma Linda, California – one of the healthiest places on earth and home to the Seventh Day Adventist diet, which encourages a mainly vegetarian diet. It’s amazing how these isolated communities often work as an unintended experiments to show the long-term effects of diet on health. And the people really seem to enjoy what they eat, too – previously they went up in arms to protest an attempted entry by fast-food chains trying to set up shop there.

On a side note, this was an intriguing photo on the article:

So why is it the bananas sold in Malaysia – which are grown in Malaysia- are so damn expensive compared to organic, probably imported from Africa or Latin America, bananas in California? Would really appreciate any ideas on what kind of economics we are talking about here.

asdsa

Bella Italia @ Bad Soden, Germany

“Small town charm” is a phrase often thrown about, but not often experienced. But this brief trip to Bad Soden, Germany, has yielded a gem of a diner that captures this phrase beautifully. Bella Italia is located off the main road (Königsteiner Straβe), so it’s not the sort of place visitors would stumble upon – we were actually recommended this place by the hotel concierge, and decided to give it a shot. We ended up going twice.

The first time

The first thing you notice is how affordable the menu is. Bella Italia doesn’t pretend to be some high-end restaurant – it is modestly furnished with plain green tablecloths and simple (but adequate) cutlery, the ambience being casual and the kind of place you might go to on a casual night out. I ended up asking the waitress for a recommendation, and she suggested something off the menu – tagliatelle with steinpilze (really, as I found out later on Wikipedia, porcini) and a simple tomato sauce. The pasta came in different colours, and was produced in house like a good Italian restaurant should.

It did not disappoint.

I think this must have been the first time I’ve knowingly ate in house pasta. While I’m sure there must have been some psychological effect at work, it tasted really nice! Soft, chewy, but maintaining the al dente texture defining well-cooked pasta, the dish was stunning in its simplicity. I was told the steinpilz was in season and it was also well-fried, complete with caramelisation and intense flavour. I was glad to have requested for no cream in the sauce – although I did not remember the sauce being particularly red, the aroma of tomatoes enveloped the dish and binded both pasta and steinpilze together.

Price: € 13.50 (including taxes, and no tips needed in Germany!)

The second time

Having had such a great dinner, we brought more people the next time round. The service was once again amazing – the waitress recognised us, and seemed genuinely happy to see us. She was also really patient in explaining every dish to our party, and I was once again being nosey and asking about the risotto, which come to think of it, I should not have begun with the question “Is your risotto any good?”. Rather rude, I think (I mean seriously what could the waitress have said other than yes), but the waitress, being the nice person she was, said yes and recommended the vegetarian option, which I went for.

At this point a colleague deduced she must be a owner/relative of the owner, since she was being excessively gracious for a waitress. (Cashmer I am in awe of your powers of deduction!) The next time she popped by again, we questioned her and sure enough, her dad owns the restaurant, her sister also waitresses, the uncle cooks, etc. It was a familly-owned business. “18 years,” she announced, unmistakable pride flowing from her words.

Alas, the risotto was somewhat of a disappointment for me. Now I am not an expert in risotto, but this risotto had too much liquid, and the rice actually tasted and looked like long-grain rice instead of the short-grain arborio I usually associate with risotto. The sauce was also too creamy for me. But others seems to enjoy the dish after a sample. I actually preferred the pesto pasta that my neighbour had – I think Bella Italia still does the pasta-based dishes best, since the other risotto at the table (seafood), while better than mine, was still not that good.

There’s something feel-good to be said when eating in such an environment – the celebration of simple food, in the presence of friends in a foreign land, and hosts happy for patrons who appreciate their food. I guess this is the small town charm that people refer to when they wax lyrical about the good ‘ol times, when people were friendlier to each other just because. You rarely see that in big towns, where most people are so self-absorbed in hectic lifestyles that they have no time for what’s around them. Although I wrote this piece as a food review, I think that it’s also important to recognise the role that ambience plays in the taste of food. In the second case, it more than made up for the mediocre risotto. In the first, it was the perfect accompaniment to a simple but honest fare, cooked from the heart.

Bella Italia Ristorante
Platz Rueil
Malmaison 2
65812 Bad Soden
Germany
06196 – 64 36 96
info@bellaitalia-badsoden.de

On being multi-level marketed

I recently had a first experience of being approached by a multi-level marketer persuading me to buy – of all things – nutritional supplements. I simply had to go along with this for the sake of academic interest, and it turned out to be mostly what I expected:

1. a lot of promise about how this product is not like the rest (along with a generous dose of flaming competitors)
2. many testimonials from satisfied users (complete with before/after pictures – important to note that the guy in before is always dressed sloppily, not smiling, and not made up, while the guy in after is dressed like a runway model and grinning like an idiot)
3. a lot of scientific sounding jargon that is sometimes non-existent, and a lot of scientific-sounding claims which are not substantiated by anything close to science
4. comparison with other more expensive options, to show how cheap this option is (but is really not)

Maybe there is a magic bullet out there that can remove all your fats, make you live for 100+ years and be happy. But I’m pretty sure this is not it. While I leave the ethics of ethics of multi-level marketing to others, I know enough to say this for sure – not even the scientific community knows whether supplements are good for you. The recent fiasco about vitamin E being related to an increased risk of prostate cancer should be a good precautionary tale to pill-popping zealots. As the basic rule of pharmacology goes, the dose makes the poison. Too much of a good thing often becomes a bad thing.

I only believe in 2 types of nutritional supplements. The first one is fruits, the second one is vegetables. I am skeptical (and a bit cynical) about nutritional supplements/products – usually peddled by large pharmaceutical companies. In my opinion, these products function as follows:

1. placebo
2. expensive enough to encourage you to commit to the plan
3. limited effects (rendered irrelevant by proper diet and exercise)
4. nicely packaged to make the person feel like they are doing something about their health

Rule 40 in Michael Pollan’s Food Rules states: Be the kind of person who takes supplements – then skip the supplements. Meaning, be conscious about the food you eat, and the rest will take care of itself. That you need supplements to maintain a healthy diet means that there’s something wrong about your diet in the first place. Changing your diet is far more direct, and a lot cheaper.

Left-handed bread

Today featured an unfortunate laundry accident during which my little finger was caught in a collapsing laundry rack. Suffice to say this invalidated my right hand, which really makes attempting to bake bread on the same day somewhat stupid.

So I thought it might make a good post to show how easy it can be to bake bread – you can do all the kneading and shaping with one hand! Plus, I used very few utensils to pull the whole thing off (no weighing scale, no mixing bowl), so there’s really no reason why we shouldn’t be doing this more often. It’s great fun, and doesn’t take you all that much time since most of it is just to let the bread sit, during which you can do other things.

 

Basic bread recipe
(all calculations are estimated by eye power)

500 g all-purpose flour
300 g warm water
half a packet instant yeast (about 5-6 g)

Clear some space on your tabletop and wipe it down with a cloth. You can use Lysol to disinfect everything, but I think it’s a bit of an overkill unless your tabletop has been hosting rats and roaches for the past 3 months.

1. Pour the flour onto the clean tabletop and make a hole in the middle. This prevents water from spilling all over the place later on.

2. Add the instant a little bit of the warm water and mix it. The yeast works faster if the water is warm. Too cold and the yeast takes longer to grow, but too hot and you kill the yeast, so be careful about the water here.

3. Pour the yeast water into the well and move your hand in a circle, drawing flour into the water as you go along. When it gets too dry, just keep adding water and mixing the flour until you get a nice dough.

4. Knead! Use the base of your palm and push down on the dough, then turn it 90° and repeat. Apparently the strength is supposed to come from your hips and not your biceps, so you shouldn’t get too tired from this. Continue kneading until the dough becomes stretchy and more like, well, dough.

5. Dust the table top with flour and put the dough on the floured surface. Cover with a warm damp cloth for at least 45 minutes.

6. The dough should be nice and huge, and airy. Use your fist and punch the dough from the top and flatten it – this distributes the yeast that has been growing happily for the past 45 minutes, and makes your dough rise more evenly later on.

7. Now you can shape your dough to whatever you want – pinch it off into smaller balls, or roll it into a log and put it in a loaf pan, etc. Make sure the surface is dusted with flour before putting the dough on. Cover with the warm damp cloth again for at least 45 minutes.

8. Bake at about 200°C for about 20 minutes, or until the top is brown.

It is actually a lot easier then the instructions sound. After reading through all that, the important steps can be summarised as follows:

1. Mix everything.
2. Knead.
3. First rise.
4. Punch and reshape dough.
5. Second rise.
6. Bake.

And the best thing is, a basic bread recipe really only needs 3 ingredients! It’s cheaper than buying outside bread, it tastes better than outside bread, and you feel a great sense of achievement doing it – I think things only sound scary and impossible to do until you do them, then you realise that there’s really nothing much to it at all. And then you can move on to adding stuff to the bread, like dried fruits and nuts, jams, cheese, and so on. Happy times!

Tappers@Capsqure

The World Cyber Games 2011 Malaysia finals at Capsquare last weekend gave me a good excuse to explore the town. Being a Sunday, most of the places were closed and so I had to settle for Tappers (this was after walking around the area and deciding I neither wanted to eat lunch at Secret Recipe, nor pay RM15 for a plate of chicken rice at the chinese restaurant nearby). They have five branches, and the design of the storefront at the Capsquare branch was actually very clean, and I guess it looks appealing to the younger crowd.

The food doesn’t, though. Of course there’s the standard fare of western food – pork chops, roast chicken, pasta and so on. I went for the set lunch, which comes with a main course and a drink. I ordered lime water for nostalgia’s sake (another story on its own), and asked the waiter for his recommendation. So roast chicken it was.

The serving was small, with precisely 3 pieces of roasted carrot and some baked potatoes, hardly enough even when put together with the coleslaw. All three items were unremarkable. The main component, the roast chicken, was not hot enough although the taste was ok. The best part of the meal was probably the lime water because it had 2 slices of real lime inside, and did not taste too sweet.

To be fair, I did not get a chance to try the other dishes, but I did go by the waiter’s recommendation – if this is the best Tappers has to offer, I think it’s market position is probably one of convenience and modern chicness, to attract young crowds who come out to meet and hang out, rather than to really enjoy their meals. Of course, it’s always the company which makes your food enjoyable. Can’t argue with that, seeing how Tappers seems to be doing so well despite mediocre fare.

Roast Chicken Set, RM 14.20 after 10% service charge

Lot G-53, Ground Floor,
Capsquare Centre,
Capital Square,
Jalan Munshi Abdullah,
50100 Kuala Lumpur.

Top reasons to exercise

1. Runner’s high. Strenuous exercise causes your body to release endorphins, which are a type of opiate (i.e. drugs that make you high) that work as painkillers, and also make you feel good. The best part? It’s 100% legal.

2. Exercise suppresses appetite. Not only does it help you burn calories, but also makes you less likely to eat right after.

3. Water tastes really good after. I’m pretty sure no one bothered to do a scientific study on this, but personal experience tells me that it tastes really good after I’ve been sweating a lot and feeling really thirsty. It tastes so good, it’s almost like drinking coke – I swear it tastes a little sweet even. The best part about water? 0 calories.

4. You feel better overall. Regular exercise increases your body’s ability to handle physical strain, from climbing the stairs to remaining mentally aware. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself for a few weeks and see how it goes.

5. It provides a good reason to socialise. Personally, I think it’s a lot easier to approach a bunch of strangers for a pick-up game of football than to ask them can I join you guys for a meal? In the first scenario, totally welcome. In the second, totally creepy.

Orthorexia

As uncomfortable as it is, I have to agree with Marion Nestle tht if you avoid all ‘unhealthy food’ (processed junk, high fructose corn syrup, saturated fats etc.), there are no negative implications on a person’s diet.

While the philosophy might be questionable, it’s hard to argue against it from a nutritional angle. But although I’m not a psychiatrist, I would think that such a way of thinking deprives you of a lot of life’s pleasures – therefore, it is undesirable in a life kind of way. I, for one, cannot imagine a world without such fantastic foods as butter, cream and cheese (and pastries, and – gasp – pizza!). Like Nestle implies, it’s more important to have a balanced diet than to absolutely cut all unhealthy elements from your diet. Unhealthiness is defined as much by dosage as the type of food you eat – too much water can actually be bad for you, while too little fat is also bad for you.

I guess the worst thing that orthorexia nervosa can cause (and then, only in extreme cases) is an unvaried diet composed entirely of organic-local-free-ranged-sustainable-natural foods, expensive and possibly more unbalanced than a sensible diet of strawberries, bananas, asparagus, broccoli, chicken and cheeses. So what if they are industrially-produced, or off-season? The label on a food should not be more important than the type of food it is.

For that reason alone, extreme cases of orthorexia should be considered serious enough to warrant professional treatment. Nestle admits as much. If an entry in the next DSM manual can attract public attention to this growing phenomenom, then so be it.

My Food Pyramid becomes MyPlate

On 2 June the US Department of Agriculture showed the government’s new food icon, and – surprise! – it was not a pyramid, but a plate. To explain what big news this is to the world of nutritionists, I think it’s appropriate to compare this to the Workers Party winning Aljunied in the General Election 2011 (ok, not quite that dramatic, but it goes along those lines). The design of the USDA’s food icon has always been a political issue because of the many food industries interested in having a slice of the pyramid (now, plate).

So this is how MyPlate looks like.

As far as I can see from the picture, the USDA recommends that we eat:

• 1/2 fruits and vegetables
• 1/4 whole grains
• 1/4 protein
• a nice glass of milk, or a thing of dairy (cheese, maybe?)

The icon also comes with a list of guidelines, which are:

Balance Calories
•    Enjoy your food, but eat less.
•    Avoid oversized portions.

Foods to Increase
•     Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
•     Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.
•     Make at least half your grains whole grains

Foods to Reduce
•    Compare sodium (salt) in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals, and choose foods with lower numbers.
•    Drink water instead of sugary drinks.

This represents a huge departure from the previous food pyramids, not least because the USDA has finally started telling Americans that they should eat less. That it’s finally in print suggests that the USDA is starting to wake up from its phase of denial, which can only be good news. Because so many countries still look up to the US as the gold standard for practically everything, hopefully this will give them the political will to improve on their own food icons as well. Many other countries still use the pyramid model, which is so problematic that it defies most common sense as to how one should eat to be healthy.

You’d be interested to know that it cost USDA $2 million to design the icon. I’m not sure exactly how this money was spent, given that the USDA itself actually came up with something similar in 1992 (which didn’t go through in the end), and given that this plate concept has been around for a long time, and was already being used by many other associations before MyPlate (American Diabetes Association, American Institute of Cancer Research, Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, Canada’s own food guide etc.)

Still, a slow baby step forward, is a step forward.

Fake eggs!

Today’s Sin Chew Daily reported news of fake eggs appearing in Penang. News of fake eggs first surfaced back in 2004 in (surprise!) China,¹ but this incident seems to have hit closer to home. The Consumer Association of Penang (CAP) investigated the chemical composition of these fake eggs, and listed an impressive list of ingredients including nitrium, alganite, alum, gelatine, benzoic acid, calcium chloride, water and food colouring products. The shell was made from paraffin wax, gypsum powder and calcium carbonate.²

Quite a mouthful there. Sin Chew Daily simplified matters by actually describing the recipe for making artificial eggs.³ I roughly translated the main ingredients as being sodium alginate, calcium oxide and other chemical compounds.

1. Liquid sodium alginate forms the basis of the egg white mixture after adjusting for viscosity to mimic the real thing.

2. Use a portion of this fake egg white and add yellow colouring. Adjust as necessary to obtain a colour close to the real egg white.

3. Put this liquid fake egg yolk into a mould (apparently they have equipment specially for producing fake egg yolks). Quickly submerge the mould into a solution of calcium oxide for a minute, in order to allow a layer to form around the fake egg yolk liquid. (n/b: I’m not sure if the solution must be calcium oxide. To the best of my knowledge, any calcium compound should work with the sodium alginate to form the layer around the egg yolk. In fact, this technique is commonly used in molecular gastronomy [read: elitist high-end atas dining] to create encapsulations of liquid. Tastes really good too.)

4. Combine the egg yolk with the egg white, and put this into a previously-prepared egg shell (made of calcium carbonate – unfortunately the process for making the shell was not described). The entire egg recipe takes less than 5 minutes to complete, making it more efficient than the hen (which actually has to lay real eggs).

Cost benefit analysis: 1 kg of real eggs cost RMB 6.50. 1 kg of sodium alginate costs RMB 42, which makes 150 kg of fake ggs. This means 1 kg of fake eggs costs RMB 0.55.

Accordingly, there are some ways to tell the difference between real and fake eggs.

Shake it – fake eggs are less dense than real eggs, and should feel lighter. They are also more watery than real eggs. If you feel like the liquid inside is slushing about too much, it might be fake.

Look at it – fake eggs have rougher shell surfaces, and also crack more easily than real eggs. When you crack the egg, fake shells probably won’t have the membrane layer between the shell and the egg. This should be a dead giveaway that you are handling a fake egg (might not be much use to find out only after you crack the egg, but hey, at least you ain’t gonna eat it).

Smell it – apparently fake eggs have a chemical smell when you hold it up close to your nose.

References

1. http://news.xinhuanet.com/photo/2004-12/28/content_2387255.htm

2. http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=577009

3. Sin Chew Daily, Metro Edition, pg 1, 8 April 2011.