More Cholesterol Myth Busting?

Heart experts--using terms such as "ground-breaking" and "paradigm-shifting"--are hailing a new study indicating that inflammation, not cholesterol, may be the reason for much of the world's heart disease and that statin drugs should be prescribed for many people whose cholesterol levels are otherwise normal.

The study, involving 18,000 volunteers in 26 countries, concludes that most people might benefit more from taking a $20 blood test that measures high-sensitive C-reactive protein (HSCRP), an indicator of heart inflammation.

The Washington Post quotes all kinds of experts calling this study nothing short of the Rosetta Stone where heart disease is concerned. But anyone who's been reading Nina Planck or Sally Fallon knows there's a whole movement of folks who never bought into the cholesterol theory of heart disease and have insisted all along that inflammation--caused by an industrial diet overloaded with Omega-6 fatty acids from processed corn and soybean oils and other factory foods previously unknown to humans--is the real cause of our modern heart disease epidemic.

Many experts, in fact, have congregated around the belief that cholesterol from saturated animal fats as a cause of heart disease is unproven and largely a myth. The Washington Post makes no mention of these longtime advocates of the alternative inflammation hypothesis. But I'm guessing there are quite a few Weston Price followers experiencing an Ah-ha! moment this morning.

Why don't we all make ourselves a big bowl of whole-fat, grass-fed yogurt and ponder that.

Season's First Choucroute

Choucroute as a recipe is less important than the people you invite to eat it with. So thank you Linda, Tom, Larry, Valca, Pete and Steve for joining us last night. Since we were all basking in the glow of Tuesday's election results, this also constituted our Kumbaya moment.

Choucroute is a classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut and pork products but there is no single agreed-upon way to make it. In other words, don't feel you have to make it exactly as written in your picture book of French cookery. My own method starts with home-made sauerkraut, shown in the photo at left beginning with about 10 pounds of shredded cabbage and six tablespoons of pickling salt packed firmly in a heavy plastic bucket so that the brine that leaches from the cabbage rises over the top. Give it a month or more to finish.

I then hop on the subway to Capitol Hill to select my pork products from the local butchers: a smoked hock or shank, bacon ends, smoked chops, fresh pork belly if they have it and Kielbasa sausage and bratwurst. Then I get back on the subway and head downtown to the Cafe Mozart where the deli case holds weisswurst and lots of other goodies. Being made of veal, I'm not sure how traditional weisswurst is in choucroute. But we love it and so do all our guests.

The day before the event, I saute a large onion with some bacon grease at the bottom of our biggest and heaviest cookpot. Cook it until it is soft and lightly caramelized. Then I grate two Granny Smith apples (with skins) directly into the pot before adding about six cups of fresh sauerkraut. I stir in a teaspoon of caraway seeds and about a dozen crushed juniper berries. Then I push my smoked ham hock deep into the middle of the kraut, pour in a half cup of Riesling wine and bring the whole mess to a boil. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting, cover the pot and let it simmer for an hour or more until the kraut is soft, aromatic and unctuous.

But for this particular choucroute, there was something special: sauerruben, or fermented grated turnips, that have been mellowing in our refrigerator for the last year and a half. They have an other-worldly nutty flavor to go with the mild tang of fermentation. I added about two cups of that to my pot as well. The results were beyond anything we've ever experienced from mere sauerkraut.

While the pot is simmering, brown all of your other meats in a heavy skillet with a little cooking oil or bacon grease. These can be wrapped and refrigerated until the following day, when the sausages, the bacon ends, the smoked chops and the pork belly are all packed into the pot to wait until the guests arrive, when we turn the heat up to a gentle simmer and let those kraut and wine juices steam everything for about 45 minutes.

We loaded the finished kraut and meat onto a big platter and served it buffet-style with roasted parsnips and carrots from the garden, mashed potatoes and homemade apple sauce. All of the guests had brought various German wines and the libations did flow. Conversation was lively, interrupted by exclamations over the turnip-infused kraut.

For dessert, we plated a stunning sweet potato pie made by my wife the baker from sweet potatoes grown just outside the kitchen window. More about that anon. I am still recovering.

Green Tomato Mincemeat

Can you believe we are still processing green tomatoes?

Our final harvest netted us a bus tub full of green tomatoes plus another bus tub full of tomatoes in various stages of ripeness. Here it is November and we are looking for new and different ways to use our green ones.

We love our sweet pickled green tomatoes and green tomato and apple chutney. In our latest search, we came across this recipe for green tomato, apple and pear mincemeat in Helen Witty's Fancy Pantry. It sounds an awful lot like the green tomato chutney, but with sharper flavors: lemon, pear, allspice, cloves, ginger and rum.

Besides serving our green tomato chutney as a condiment, we like to spread it on a cracker with goat cheese. I see a similar destination for this meatless mincemeat, which also would be perfectly fine in pastries and such. This recipe makes about eight pints, which is a lot. You could easily halve it and can the mincemeat in half-pint jars for holiday gift-giving.

3 quarts coarsely chopped green tomatoes, scrubbed and trimmed of stem scars
1 tablespoon iodized salt
1 1/2 quarts diced, peeled and cored firm, tart apples
1 quart diced, peeled and cored firm, slightly underripe pears
2 1/2 cups dark seedless raisins
Grated zest and chopped pulp of 1 or 2 medium oranges
Grated zest of 2 small lemons
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup undiluted frozen apple concentrate, thawed
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup dark rum (we substituted Calvados)

Stir chopped tomatoes and salt together, scrape into a colander and let drain for 2 hours

Combine drained tomatoes with apples, pears, raisins, orange zest and pulp, lemon zest, vinegar, apple concentrate, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, cloves and ginger in a preserving pan or heavy, non-reactive pot. Bring mixture to a boil over moderately-high heat. Lower heat and cook, uncovered, stirring often, until mincemeat is thick enough to mound in a spoon, about 1 hour. Take care to stir often and scrape the bottom to prevent burning.

Stir rum (or Calvados) into boiling-hot mincemeat, cook a minute or two longer, then ladle into hot, clean canning jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove any air bubbles (I poke around the mincemeat and stir gently using a long wooden skewer). Seal jars with new two-piece canning lids according to manufacturer's instructions and process in a boiling water bath for 25 minutes (for pint-size jars). Let mincemeat mellow for about a month before using.

Note: you can also store the mincemeat covered but not sealed in your refrigerator.

Kids Make Souffleed Corn Bread

For the second stop on our virtual world culinary tour, the kids in my "food appreciation" classes traveled to the Appalachian region of western North Carolina.

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between Appalachian fare and what we loosely refer to as Southern Food. Sometimes the two intertwine. Corn is a staple of both and corn meal--the basis for hearty corn bread--in ubiquitous in this part of the country. Think grits, hush puppies, spoon bread--we could devote a whole book to this one particular grain and how it permeated the soul of America's one true cuisine.

My go-to reference for Southern baked goods is the classic Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, by Bill Neal. Originally from South Carolina, Bill Neal made a name for himself as a restaurateur in Chapel Hill, NC, with his wife Moreton Neal, then went on to become something of a scholar where Southern food is concerned before he died too young at the age of 41 from AIDS. Neal included no less than seven recipes for corn bread in Biscuits, Spoonbread. What they all have in common is corn meal, of course, and an iron skillet in which to bake the bread. Frequently, the recipe also calls for buttermilk and a chemical rising agent, such as baking soda and sometimes baking powder.

These are the essentials of true, Southern corn bread, not the cakey, overly sweet stuff you so often see in cafeteria lines.

A corn bread souffleed with beaten egg whites would be the kind of thing you'd put out when company came for dinner. (In fact, this is a variation on something Bill Neal called "Company Corn Bread.") Mainly, what I wanted the kids in our "food appreciation" classes to appreciate is the role rustic corn meal plays in our food culture and how it can be manipulated with a few simple ingredients into something ethereally delicious.

In some Southern households, it was customary to have at least one heavy iron skillet on hand devoted to making corn bread. From frequent use, the skillet would become well-seasoned and non-stick. You may not have an iron skillet devoted to making corn bread. If you don't have an iron skillet at all, can I suggest getting one? It is a great kitchen tool, something we use all the time.

1 1/2 cup white cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs, separated
3/4 cup creamed-style canned corn
3 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

In a large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. In a large measuring cup, mix buttermilk, egg yolks, creamed corn and melted butter. (I melt the butter in the iron skillet in the oven, which has the added virtue of greasing the skillet. Simply pour the butter, once melted, into the measuring cup with the other wet ingredients, then put the skillet back in the oven to heat up again.)

In a separate mixing bowl, beat eggs whites to stiff peaks.

Meanwhile, pour wet ingredients from measuring cup into dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Then fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour the mixture into the hot skillet. If the batter bubbles around the edges, you know you are on the right track. Place the skillet in the oven and bake until the top of the corn bread is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

You could serve this bread with your favorite barbecue, with a bowl of Southern greens or beans, a salad or just an afternoon snack. If possible, serve it warm, perhaps with a drizzle of melted creamery butter or some local honey.

Yes We Can

Time for Change

Braided Sweet Potato Bread

I'm not the baker in the family--that would be my wife. But I can make this sweet potato bread, which should prove that anyone can do it as well.

This is a versatile bread with a light taste of sweet potatoes, just the thing to help us use that huge haul of sweet potatoes we made from the garden recently. I made some for our recent "food appreciation" classes where the kids spread slices of bread with fresh apple butter. That's another great combination.

The first thing my wife noticed about this loaf was that I'd screwed up the braid. Oh, well. I guess I was AWOL when they were giving braiding instructions. But with an egg glaze nicely browned in the oven, no one really notices. This bread is especially good toasted for breakfast. I've been snacking on it lately, smeared with blue cheese.

The recipe, which I initially posted here, makes two loaves that can be braided or not. Start eating one now and freeze the second loaf for later. Another suggestion: consider replacing some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour.