Tomato Soup Base and Soup

Several summers ago, The Oregonian, my local newspaper, published some tomato soup recipes; a set of recipes, actually: a tomato soup base to be made and frozen plus some soup recipes that could be made from the soup base. I tried it and have been hooked ever since. Now, every summer when the tomatoes are ripe I make soup base. Then throughout the year, when we feel like a light meal, I defrost some soup base and make a pot of soup.


The soup base should be made with very ripe flavorful tomatoes -- the kind you get at a farmer's market, not the supermarket kind that are shipped green and then "ripened" in warehouses. You really taste the ingredients in the final product, so you want them to be as flavorful as possible. This year I used canning tomatoes from a local organic produce stand. They were a mix of different varieties and not as pretty as slicing tomatoes, but they made great soup!


Versatile Tomato Soup Base
Makes about 14 cups soup base

3 Walla Walla or other sweet onions (2 ½ pounds), cut into ¼ -to ½- inch dice, about 6 ½ cups packed
1 medium celery stalk (3 ounces), cut into ¼-inch dice, about 2/3 cup
¼ cup olive oil
1 large red bell pepper (½ pound), cut into ¼-inch dice, about 1 ¼ cups
20 to 24 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped, about ½ cup
6 pounds tomatoes (very ripe garden or farmers market varieties such as Early Girl, Roma or Beefsteak), cored and chopped¹ into ¾- to 1-inch pieces, about 14 cups

Optional:
2 ½ teaspoons kosher salt²
½ teaspoon ground white pepper

In a large stockpot over medium-high heat, cook the onions and celery in the olive oil until translucent and almost tender, 10 minutes. Do not brown. Stir in the bell pepper and garlic; cook 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and any salt or white pepper. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes, covered. Allow base to cool. Freeze in 2- or 3-cup portions for later use.

¹ If you want, you can peel and seed the tomatoes, but I don't find it necessary. I may squeeze out the seeds from a particularly ripe seedy tomato, but otherwise I don't usually bother.
² Kosher salt has larger crystals than regular table salt, so if you use table salt, use half as much!


Here is the soup recipe that I use most. It's very flexible and can be made vegetarian or vegan by leaving out the bacon and/or milk or cream. I've had it all ways and can attest that each is delicious.

(Cream of) Tomato Soup
Makes about 8 cups

1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped, 2/3 cup
1 tablespoon olive oil, if you're not adding bacon to the soup
6 cups Versatile Tomato Soup Base (thaw fully if frozen)
1 cup water
1 fresh bay leaf
¾ teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Optional:
2-4 slices bacon
1/3 cup milk or heavy cream
* Kosher salt and black pepper

If you're using bacon, cook it in a medium pot over medium-low heat until crisp, about 5 minutes, turning frequently. Drain bacon on paper towels; remove all but 1 tablespoon fat from pot. Chop bacon; reserve.

Add carrot to pot; cook over medium-high heat in either the bacon fat or 1T of olive oil, stirring until tender, 5 minutes. Add soup base, water, bay leaf, thyme and any reserved bacon. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook 15 minutes. Remove from heat and remove the bay leaf. Add milk or cream if desired. I tend to like it chunky, but if you want a traditional smooth soup, use an immersion blender or conventional blender to puree soup. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.

Tomatoland

Tomatoes were a big part of summer life when I was growing up in Indiana. We grew them in the garden, had them for dinner every night, and canned the juice for winter. We generally didn't eat them other times of the year -- they were trucked in from Florida, and as my Uncle George in Miami always said, "Florida tomatoes just don't taste as good as Indiana ones." So I'm a big tomato fan and a sucker for any kind of story about them.


When I sat down to listen to a Talk of the Nation radio show with Barry Estabrook, the author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, I expected to hear about the difficulties of growing a delicious fruit that can be shipped thousands of miles and still look perfect. And I did. Estabrook talked about how slicing tomatoes (what we buy in the grocery) are picked when hard and perfectly green and then ripened with ethylene gas in warehouses. But he went on to talk about some other things -- some of which were very disturbing.

He talked about how most tomatoes in US supermarkets come from either Florida or California, and how those in the winter almost exclusively come from Florida. Combating the molds and rusts and germs and insects of Florida's humid climate requires lots of pesticides, however -- 8 times the amount needed in California's dry summer climate! Florida tomatoes are also grown in sand, and all the plant's nutrients have to be added to that sand.

What really disturbed me, though, didn't have to do with the tomatoes, themselves; it had to do with the workers picking tomatoes. Supermarket tomatoes are picked by hand, primarily by foreign workers. And in southwestern Florida, the wintertime "tomato capital" of the US, those workers are slaves.

Yes, you heard me right - slaves¹! Not even virtual slaves; they're "locked up, shackled in chains at night, locked in the back of produce trucks at night so that they're handy to be delivered to the fields in the morning, bought and sold and negotiated for almost at auction." And if they run away, they're chased down and beaten as an example to others.

According to Estabrook, "There have been more than 1,200 people freed from slavery rings in Florida agriculture in the last 10 or 15 years. Off the record an official told me recently that there's two cases currently under investigation. The problem is they're very, very hard cases to prosecute. So what you're seeing is the tip of a really ugly iceberg."

I thought Estabrook surely must be exaggerating, but Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large and director of the US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, also spoke briefly by phone on the program. He confirmed that "there still is modern slavery right here in our own backyards." Enforcement is being stepped up around the country, but what will really help is if companies know that consumers care about how their food is picked and packed.

So I care. And I suggest you do, too. Take a listen to the interview (it's linked above) and see what you think. The pesticide issue, alone, would make me want to limit consumption of conventionally-grown Florida tomatoes. But slavery ... while that problem exists, I won't be buying or eating Florida tomatoes at all!


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¹ I couldn't believe it, so I did some more research. The US now includes itself in the annual US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, and here are links to the 2010 report and the 2010 special briefing. There's not a lot of detail, but the briefing has a little more - just search on "Florida".

Home-Smoked Salmon

I love smoked salmon! For years I toyed with the idea of smoking salmon myself so I could control the sodium level, quality, and flavor. And last year while visiting a friend, I had the opportunity to try making and eating fresh home-smoked fish --- what a WOW experience! I arrived home, ready to quit toying with the idea and try my hand at it.


My friend used a specialized electric smoker, but I decided to start off more simply... using my outdoor gas grill. I searched the Internet for recipes and techniques, and I experimented with them whenever local salmon went on sale. What follows is my current recipe. Feel free to change it up so it tastes the way you like best!

It takes about 5-7 hrs total time to make, although most of that time is spent waiting, not working. The breakdown of time is as follows:

       ½ hr preparation + ½ hr brining + 2 hrs drying + 2-4 hrs smoking

Anne's Home-Smoked Salmon

• Brine (use about 1 cup per side of salmon):
  
  • 1 cup of lukewarm water
  • 2T kosher salt
  • 1/3 cup honey
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1+ teaspoon minced garlic (fresh tastes best, but dried is ok)
• Wild salmon fillets.
  
• 2-3 handfuls of wood chips - alder, mesquite, etc. If you use the chips for BBQing that are available at the grocery or other stores, they'll be fine. If you get wood at the lumberyard, make sure it's untreated.

Carefully bone the salmon. First, wash a pair of needle-nose pliers. Then run your finger across the salmon side, feeling for the pin bones. When you find one, use the pliers to grasp it and pull it out. The bones are in there at an angle, so be sure to pull at the same angle, or else you'll rip the flesh.


Then you have a choice --- to leave the salmon fillets whole, or to cut them up. When serving, I like to present a whole side of salmon, but for brining and smoking and freezing, it's easier to work with smaller pieces. So I'll often cut a side of salmon up for smoking and then reassemble it for serving (you can see an example of this in the first picture).

Next, simmer the bay leaf (or leaves) in a little additional water while making the brine. To make the brine, add the various ingredients to the lukewarm water and stir until dissolved. Then add in the bay water & leaves.


Place the salmon in the brine in a glass or plastic container. Since the salmon tends to float, if it all fits in one layer, I place it skin side up so the flesh will be in contact with the brine. Otherwise, if you need to layer the salmon, place the fillets face-to-face and back-to-back to help keep scales off the the flesh. If necessary, place a small plate on the salmon to weigh it down. Allow the salmon to brine for 30 minutes. If you prefer your salmon saltier, brine it longer.



After it's brined to your satisfaction, remove the salmon from the brine, rinse well (but don't scrub the fish!), and pat dry. Allow the salmon to dry on racks (I use cookie racks) over cookie sheets (to catch any drips) in a cool place in the open air for at least 2 hrs (a basement is a great place to do this). No guarantees, but I read that, because the fish has been brined, it won't spoil. As the fish dries, its surface gets kind of tacky --- perfect for capturing little smoke particles!


Soak the wood chips in water for the last half hour of the fish's drying time. About 5 minutes before the drying time is done, place a handful of wet wood chips in a smoking box¹, and place the box directly on one burner on one side of the grill, under the grate. Turn on only that one burner. Set it to medium/high for about 5 minutes to get some smoke going and then adjust it back to medium or low. Adjust the setting as needed to achieve a low temperature (200 – 300 degrees).


Oil a cooling rack and place the salmon on it, skin-side down. If you like pepper, sprinkle some cracked black pepper on the fish. Place the rack on the cool side of the grill and close the lid. If you have more racks of salmon than will fit on the grill surface, I've found it possible to stack them, using other grill accessories like a warming or shish-kabob rack.


Check on the salmon every 15-30 minutes or so and add more wet chips to the smoking box as needed (i.e. if it doesn’t seem very smoky). After an hour, start testing the salmon for doneness and take it off the grill when it reaches 165 degrees. The length of time it takes will depend on the grill temperature.


Serve immediately or cool to room temperature, wrap tightly and then either refrigerate for up to 3 days or freeze in an airtight bag.

Enjoy!

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¹ A smoking box is a small metal box with holes in it and a removable lid. I found one in the BBQ section of the hardware store for a few dollars. You can also use an aluminum foil pouch with holes punched in it, instead. Just put the wet wood chips in the box or pouch, place it on or near the burner and, voilà... smoke!

Eating With Our Eyes

When we think about eating, we usually think about the taste of food in our mouths, but we also eat with our eyes! A beautiful plate of food is an expression of love and consciousness -- one that says that not only did extra loving care go into the cooking, but someone cared about YOU enough to make your plate look tempting.


Making food delicious to the eye is also part of making it delicious to the palate. When food looks fresh and interesting, it sets our expectations that it will taste that way, too. And expectations help determine what we experience. For an individual trying to eat less, it can help make up for eating less quantity. And for someone with an impaired appetite, it can be the difference between being able to eat at all or not.

A friend's mother, who is a well-known retired nutritionist and cooking teacher in Japan, always said that a meal should include 5 colors. In that way you could make sure to get a good balance of healthy food components. So the beauty of delicious-looking food is not just skin-deep!

I'm not an expert at food presentation, but I care about it when I cook and serve, and I expect you do, too. I've spent some serious time thinking about it recently, trying to organize my thoughts and reinforce my commitment to good presentation, and here's what I've come up with. To me, the key principles center around freshness, variety, and composition.

Freshness
Food looks best when it appears to have just been picked or prepared. An obvious example is lettuce -- it looks great when it's crisp; it looks sad when it's limp. Similarly, veggies look more appetizing when they're closer to their fresh-picked colors. I may love the taste of green beans cooked until they're a muddy green with onion & a bit of bacon, but I will admit that they're not a treat to look at, even to these Indiana eyes. Beans steamed just until they're tender, however, are delicious to both the eye and the palate.

Fresh-picked juicy tomatoes
One of the big keys to a fresh look is moisture or juiciness. Think about two ripe tomatoes -- one glistens as if just picked with dew still on it, the other looks dry and its skin is a little loose. Which looks more delicious? If you cook meat or fish, the same principle applies -- it's most appetizing when it looks juicy. Maybe liquids hit more taste buds and throw off more aroma molecules for our noses, so our experience is that flavor is intensified? Whatever it is, I think, to our brains: Juicy = Fresh = Delicious!

Variety
When it's not all the same color, or the same texture, or even the same shape, food looks more interesting. A plate of whole wheat pasta with garlic, onion and parmesan might be good, but it's all pretty much the same color. Consider adding some parsley or colorful lightly sauteed veggies to give it some variety.

Pasta primavera topped with toasted almonds.
Another option is to use a colorful serving dish to set off bland-colored food.


Shape and texture can also add interest. Several years ago I had a wonderful dish of asparagus and snap-peas with fresh dill at The Screen Door restaurant in Portland. Rather than slicing everything into little cylinders, the chef had elected to slice the asparagus and snap-peas on the bias. I don't know if you've ever seen snap peas cut that way, but they're very intriguing looking -- you see the whole structure of the pod and peas in it. To add even more visual interest, the chef had then added some pea shoots, with their leaves and little curving tendrils. It was an amazing dish -- as delicious to look at as to eat!

Snap peas cut on an extreme bias.
Sometimes garnishes can be used to add shape and texture. My preference is to only use them when they add to both the taste and the look of a dish; it hurts me to see, for example, beds of lettuce and parsley sprigs just thrown away. At a tiny Japanese restaurant in San Francisco's Japantown, we were served smoked salmon nigiri sushi with a tiny thinly-sliced wedge of lemon topping each piece. It was very beautiful - a small fan of yellow atop the orange salmon on the white rice cake. But moreover, the flavor of lemon with the salmon was exquisite. That remains, in my mind, the example of a perfect garnish.

Composition
This is where we really enter the realm of art. The plate or the table or a serving dish is our canvas. For our design elements, there is the food itself, along with any garnishes or sauces and the serving dishes or plates.

If you're a visual artist, then you're way ahead of the game when it comes to composition. Fortunately, for the rest of us, there are various rules of thumb that can be learned and applied; techniques that are typically used in 2-dimensional art but, I think, can apply as well to food presentation.

First there are the design principles that don't tell you how to design, so much as what to shoot for in your composition. Principles like 1) creating a center of interest, 2) striving for harmony and complementary effects, 3) aiming for a unified whole, but with some interesting variation, and 4) using contrasting visuals.

Then there are some principles that can provide real guidance in achieving a pleasing composition. Here are a few that I find helpful:

The rule of thirds. In visual art, the rule of thirds says if you divide your canvas into 9 equal segments via 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines, then placing the important elements of the picture along those lines or at their intersections will add balance and interest. So, when I plate food, I often consider the plate my canvas and try to arrange the food on it accordingly -- not at the center, not at the very edges, but about a third of the way over and/or across.

A plating according to the rule of thirds
Balance. Applying the rule of thirds can put the main subject off-center, creating an interesting asymmetry, but also leaving an empty space on the other side. For balance, include one or more offsetting design elements in that space... another small amount of food, or a garnish, or even some painted strokes of sauce.

The rule of odds. For some reason, human brains like to see an odd number of subjects in an image. So if I'm preparing a plate of food, I'll usually try to arrange it to contain 3 groupings of food, for example a main dish and 2 sides.

Simplification. You've heard the mnemonic KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), right? Well, it applies to food presentation, too. Too much clutter on a plate detracts visually, drawing the eye away from the primary focus. So, use large plates, don't try to crowd too much on each one, and clean off smears and smudges of food before serving.


Bon Appetit!

Apple-Peanut Slaw

Many years ago I went to dinner at a friend's. When I arrived, there was nothing cooking. Instead, my friend went out into his garden and picked a head of cabbage. He shredded it, dressed it with a little mayonnaise, and served it up as dinner. Having assumed that dinner = protein + starch + green vegetable, I was temporarily taken aback, but quickly came around. It was a delicious summer meal -- light and crunchy and fresh! I've never again seen slaw in the same light.

I fell in love with this apple-peanut slaw at a BBQ place in San Jose, CA called Armadillo Willy's. It's a little sweet and, if you liked taffy apples rolled in peanuts as a kid, you'll probably like it, too. It's a cool complement to barbecue or is nicely set off by an ear of lightly steamed corn and a bean salad.

My version is mild, but at Armadillo Willy's they make it spicy, so don't hesitate to add a little cayenne pepper and/or Tabasco to the dressing if you want some kick.

Apple-Peanut Slaw for 6

Veggies:

1-1/2 lb. green cabbage (about 1/2 head), shredded

1 carrot, shredded

1 tart organic apple, cored and shredded

Dressing:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup low-fat yogurt

1/8 cup brown sugar¹

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1/2 to 1 cup dry-roasted low-salt or salt-free peanuts

Shred the cabbage and carrot and toss together in a large bowl. Blend the dressing ingredients together. Shred the apple last (so it doesn't have time to brown) and toss it well with the cabbage/carrot mixture. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and mix well. Either mix in the peanuts just before you serve or put them on the table separately for people to sprinkle on top.

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¹In the future I plan to experiment with using honey instead of brown sugar. If you happen to try that first, let me know how it comes out!

Pure Food and Wine - NYC

I heard recently from Stuart Perrin about a wonderful lunch he had at a restaurant called Pure Food and Wine, on Irving Place in New York City. He said “The concept is great: raw foods prepared with a serious gourmet touch. The food was delicious, well balanced and a great deal of consciousness went into its preparation and presentation. Everything was Vegan: no meat, no dairy, no sugar. Even my 15 year old daughter raved about the lunch. It was a special experience - something to be learned…”

For those in New York, it sounds like a wonderful place to eat! And for all of us, it serves as a good reminder to, as Stuart put it to me, “try and reach for the exceptional… possibilities of healthy gourmet food.”

Organic or Not?

When cooking, I often specify organic for some ingredients, but not others. I know there are other considerations, but from a healthy cooking perspective, here's how I decide when to go organic.

For a long time, I didn't know what to make of organics. They were so expensive, and the organic produce always looked older and sadder at the regular supermarket than its conventionally-bred brethren.

I began to change when the issue of overexposure to Alar, a pesticide commonly used on apples, became big news in 1989. At that time, I was eating an apple every day for lunch. Suddenly, the organic apples looked better to me, and I began buying them when they were available. But I still wasn't convinced about other fruits and vegetables.

My true change of heart came when Consumer Reports began recommending that consumers always buy organic for certain produce items¹. Drawing on government data, they listed a dozen or so fruits and vegetables that frequently tested positive for pesticide residue, even after washing (and sometimes peeling!). I decided that, when a mainstream non-profit organization like Consumer Reports said there was a problem, it was time for me to listen. I began to seriously change my buying and eating habits.

These days my list comes from the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit committed to exposing problems with toxic contaminants. They analyze data from the USDA Pesticide Testing program and annually publish their findings. The group just released their 2011 report EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce on June 20th, listing the latest Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen, as follows:

EWG's 2011 Dirty Dozen^TM
Most frequently contaminated/ highest in pesticide residue -- eat organic!

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Strawberries
4. Peaches
5. Spinach
6. Nectarines (imported)
7. Grapes (imported)
8. Sweet Bell Peppers
9. Potatoes
10. Blueberries (domestic)
11. Lettuce
12. Kale/collard greens

EWG's 2011 Clean Fifteen^TM
Lowest in pesticide residue

1. Onions
2. Sweet Corn**
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet Peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Cantaloupe (domestic)
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet Potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

**Genetically modified (GMO) sweet corn is not labeled so in the US. If you have concerns about GMOs, then buy organic sweet corn.

Now I shop according to the list. For items in the Dirty Dozen, I try very hard to buy organic, and if it doesn't look good at the supermarket, I go to an organic grocery. For items in the Clean 15, I don't worry too much. And for everything else, I either lean towards organic or consult EWG's full list and make a judgment call.

Yes, organic produce is more expensive. But I think it's worth it to avoid eating pesticides. Even though the exposures for individual items may be low and the USDA says they're within regulatory tolerances, they must add up if you're eating healthy amounts of fruits and veggies every day. And when you're trying to eat a particularly plant-based diet, I think it's even more important to lower the volume of pesticides consumed!

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¹ Consumer Reports' original article does not seem to be available on the web, but here's one from February 2006, "Starting the Year Right"