When It Comes To Crunch

I need crunch. Every day. Crunchy... crispy... - how do I love thee? Let me (re)count some of the ways.

• potato chips, of course. It is true – you can’t eat just one – which is why they are almost never in my house. (Occasional exceptions are made for Covered Bridge Potato Chips from New Brunswick - home of 60 covered bridges, including Hartland - the world’s longest). 
• perfect French Fries – and the award goes to Jamie Kennedy who recently ended an era in the Toronto food scene with the closing of Gilead. In related interviews, he recounts that his fries were inspired by his time in Paris. His two sons continue the tradition every Saturday at the impressive and unique Evergreen Brickworks Market.
• pork crackling, most notably the little piece that appears in every porchetta sandwich at Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg. Yes, “burg”, not “bord” – named as such since the indescribably wonderful flea and food market is in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn
• super crispy wiener schnitzel – cravings were satisfied by the Coffee Mill (sadly, recently closed forever)
• the crunch from the crust of freshly baked bread
• vegetable crunch is also good – the first crop of coreless carrots; celery hearts – when fresh, are crunchy and can be nicely enhanced with crunchy peanut butter; radishes - freshly harvested, with a sprinkle of salt
• and my favourite apples – aptly named Honey Crisp

It seems I am not alone. 

According to Mario Batali (in The Babbo Cookbook), "The single word 'crispy' sells more food than a barrage of adjectives describing the ingredients or cooking techniques."

Eating triggers many senses – visual (we want our food to be “eye candy”); aroma (helpful in triggering digestive juices). Flavour (the artful combination of the basic tastes - sweet, salty sour, bitter and umamai) may not be the most important sense. Texture (and often the accompanying sound) can trump all – and there is an entire industry focusing on that.

An article on food texture in The Guardian refers to the "Texture Centre of Excellence help(ing) the food industry achieve the perfect consistency for their products. Texture is big business and the science of food structure even has its own ology: food rheology... the professionals know all too well that, while the sensory spotlight may fall on flavour when we're savouring a mouthful, get the texture wrong and it's game over – we'll reject it outright.”

Why do we like crunchy and crispy? It tends to signal freshness. And then there is the matter of chewing. The word conjures iconic images of cows chewing cud, but it seems we need to chew, and that need "continues right through to old age when... we'll throw cash and inconvenience at fixing our teeth so we may continue to chew, even though we could just as well get our nutrition from soft or pureed foods. Gnawing is… good for you, too. A growing body of research indicates that it increases blood flow to the brain, which helps stave off dementia.” (Source)

While some write haikus honouring mush, others claim it is almost tortuous to be limited to mushy food - “a form of sensory deprivation… the mind rebels against bland, single-texture foods, edibles that do not engage the oral device.” (Source) A food industry consultant “says the three most relished texture notes are crispy, creamy and chewy”. I like all those words, as long as "chewy" does not equal rubbery.

Rubbery. Gritty. Slimy. Not big hits with most people. I could not find a satisfyingly complete lexicon of food texture words. This British Nutrition Foundation Sensory Vocabulary poster makes a good attempt, but oddly does not include the word chewy. Think crunchy is the same as crispy? Apparently not, according to Wikipedia.  

So, we like crunchy / crispy because of chewing, and… because of sound! There are experts who spend years researching topics such as how crunch works. “To get this noise, you need crack speeds of 300 meters per second... The speed of sound. The crunch of a chip is a tiny sonic boom inside your mouth… to a certain extent, we eat with our ears… You eat physical properties with a little bit of taste and aroma. And if the physics is not good, then you don’t eat it.” (Source)

The happenings in our mouth while eating are called mouthfeel - also referred to as oral haptics. Recent studies suggest that oral haptics influence our judgement about calories. People tend to assume that crunchier food has fewer calories. Maybe my crunchy food moments are also a calorie delusion!

The appeal of crunchy / crispy is cross-cultural and may even be primitive. In his book The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food, John S. Allen, a research scientist, proposes that we like crunch because it was central to the primitive diet - in the form of insects. Once insects (and other foods) met fire / cooking (and the Maillard Reaction) crunch became part of the human experience. I’ll have to ponder the idea that the love of crunch is the manifestation of the paleo insect-eater inside each of us. And yet, simple Google searches can lead to a reading journey about insects as the future food. Once the renowned René Redzepi begins to explore possibilities, we know we have not heard the last of this.

This blog exercise in thinking, reading and writing came from my need for crunch. Most days that need is satisfied by roasted, unsalted (healthy) almonds. Seeking some variety, I had some adventures roasting legumes (good for us), specifically chickpeas – and have also included a roasted edamame snack. (Click here for recipes.) Healthy snacks can make us feel virtuous, but too much virtue comes with a price – watch the calorie count.

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Hurry Up (Schmecking) Chocolate Cake

My (not so profound) observation about writing a blog is that I am often wondering what the next entry will be about. I don’t have a stack of ideas waiting to be “published”. Often there is a pleasantly surprising convergence of ideas and events.

I am the youngest person at Tai Chi and admire the joie de vivre of members in their 80s and even older. When Jennie (82) told me she was taking her husband on a bus tour of Mennonite Country it triggered a whoosh of memories – and naturally, that involved food. Around here “Mennonite Country” means St Jacob’s and Waterloo County - the Mennonite Relief Sale (featuring unforgettable strawberry pies), the Mennonite / St Jacob's Farmers' Market – ten minutes from the Kitchener Market – a community noted for a huge Oktoberfest celebrating German Heritage. In fact, almost one hundred years ago, Kitchener changed its name from Berlin.

Converging with these memories were updates from Food52 about their 2015 Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks (I have no idea why it is called that). Over a period of three weeks, sixteen cookbooks were reviewed, leading to one winner. (A bit like a more complex “Canada Reads”.) In conjunction with that, the Food52 blog asked readers about oldest / most worn cookbooks. For me, the cookbook(s) linked to Mennonite Country are those from Edna Staebler – Food That Really Schmecks and More Food That Really Schmecks – both easily survived my cookbook purge of last year. With red-face, I confess that these days I prefer cookbooks with lots of photos – food porn, as it is now referred to. There is not a single photo in Edna’s books. She clearly announces in both books that she is not a trained cook. She said she loved cooking with “blissful abandon” (wow! Kitchen Bliss 1.0). Today we might say that she “curated” these collections of hearty, rustic and tasty (schmecking) recipes, that use local produce – saying she did not include any recipes that required some exotic import - such as kiwi - or a processed ingredient.

She must have been an impressive woman. Born in 1906, in what was then called Berlin, she achieved a university education and teaching qualifications. She was an accomplished author and wrote for many well-known Canadian publications. The cookbooks, she says, were an unplanned, but satisfying “accident”. As with many (good) cookbooks, the introductory chapters are a delight to read and I was happy to re-visit these pages, where she described friends from the Mennonite community (founded by families that migrated north from Pennsylvania - and originally from Europe). She waxes rhapsodically about her beloved Waterloo County and its entrepreneurial roots. Edna died in 2006 at the age of 100, and so she lived long enough to see her community grow – including as the home base for Blackberry / RIM and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

But I digress from the topic of food... There are many pages with folded corners in her books. Some I will return to in future, but the one that made it onto the Easter menu was Hurry Up Chocolate Cake. This cake is quick - and clean – the only thing dirtied in the making is the baking pan. Edna included it in one of the books, it seems almost reluctantly, saying “you probably have this recipe…”. I’m glad she shared it, since it has been made and devoured countless times in my kitchen.

One final “convergence”… The recipes in the “Schmecking” books are “old”. The second of the two volumes was published in 1979, and Edna’s preface outlines the venerable roots of many of the recipes, passed from generation to generation. About the same time that I was lost in reverie in this old cookbook, I stumbled across The Wacky Cake recipe. It too is a one pan chocolate cake that requires the cook to make little “craters” in the dry mix into which the wet ingredients are added – same as Edna’s! The cake was considered wacky because it uses no eggs, butter or milk – and the guess is that it dates back to wartime rationing. There are some differences between the two – she uses buttermilk (she seems to love using buttermilk or sour milk), whereas the America’s Test Kitchen Wacky Cake Recipe uses water and oil. In another entry, ATK says “We chose water over milk or buttermilk to moisten our cake batter, discovering that cakes made with dairy had a more muted chocolate flavour.” I have had no time to check this out – but will report back!

If all of that was not enough of a “blast from the past” – this weekend we have reservations at Boralia (some reviews call it Borealia) – a TO resto that “celebrates the historic origins of Canadian cuisine. Our menu draws inspiration from traditional Aboriginal dishes, as well as the recipes of early settlers and immigrants of the 18th and 19th centuries.” Will report back on that as well!

Now… hurry up and make that schmecking chocolate cake!

Flummoxed About Fat

Last week an earthquake registered off the coast of Vancouver Island. Media reports referenced the location’s proximity to a point where the Juan de Fuca plate attempts to slide under the North American plate. None of the news articles felt the need to explain plate tectonics – now considered to be a well-known, accepted geophysical fact. Yet in my lifetime this was not always so. Elements of the theory were proposed in the early 1900s, but even in the 1960s ideas such as continental drift were considered by some to be unconventional and unaccepted.

“Truths” linked to “science” can evolve and change, and “truths” about health and food are no exception. Who could blame us for feeling flummoxed, with questions that have too many conflicting answers? Is Vitamin D good? Should we restrict cholesterol? Should we eat many small meals a day? Is red wine and dark chocolate good for us? Nina Teicholz’s recent publication called The Big Fat Surprise outlines and adds to growing research that fats are good for us after all (including some saturated fats). [Warning: vegetarian friends may consider some of what follows, coarse language.]

Despite the mantra all researchers should live by – “correlation does not equal causation” – Teicholz outlines how the origins of some claims about health and food can be traced back to faulty observations and assumptions. Easter and Lent, it seems can, in part, be blamed for a decades old demonization of fat. “In the early 1950s… (a) scientist believed he found, in part by studying a group of men on Crete… that their good health and low rates of heart disease were due to a diet low in animal fats…Pouring over some of Keys’ original studies, Teicholz realized his work was partly based on men who had been observing Lent - a time when Cretans dramatically reduced their consumption of meat and animal fats.” (Source)

This blog post is not intended to change any reader’s attitude toward fat. For me, the new “truth” about fat makes me feel better about my full fat choices (and childhood.)

Nagypapa | szalonna sütés | Queenston Heights

I have already blogged about my childhood obsession with butter. Bacon was another fat linked to fond memories. My grandfather’s fridge always had a huge hunk of bacon, sometimes called slab bacon (cured and smoked). He would cut little pieces for me (what the French would call lardons) and place them on slivers of rye bread, and called them kis katona (little soldiers). A bacon roast (szalonna sütés) involved putting slab bacon on a stick, and cooking it over a fire. Every few minutes the fat from the bacon was dripped over slices of rye bread that was smothered with a mixture of tomatoes and onions. Incredible! 

I did not have a “meat and potatoes” upbringing. Many meals were meatless – Hungarian kitchens produced a lot of creamed vegetables and pasta dishes. Almost anything could be mixed with cooked pasta. Túrós tészta / csusza involved mixing pasta with ricotta and a bit of sour cream, sprinkling with bacon lardons, and drizzling with bacon grease. I preferred this pasta / ricotta combo with sugar (oh dear, another evil) instead of bacon grease. Considering that celebrity chefs like Lidia and Jamie drizzle olive oil over so many things, funny that the idea of a “bacon grease drizzle” still does not appeal. I am not convinced too many readers will want to make this, but here is a link to website with a version of the recipe. 

 Túrós tészta | Source

Government websites still list saturated fats as “bad”. This doesn’t seem to bother those adopting the latest café craze – butter coffee – especially popular in wellness oriented coffee shops. Some of my recent recipe testing assignments are intended for a cookbook promoting the Paleo lifestyle, and they all use coconut oil - listed on both Canadian and American websites as bad saturated fats to be avoided.

Teicholz researched her book for almost ten years, but “isn't optimistic that change will come easily. The clean eating food movements, led by the Michael Pollans and Mark Bittmans, are hugely influential.” Mind you, a Pollan saying is “Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.” Unwittingly, he thus gives me permission to continue eating full fat products. I won't apologize for the fact that some of my recipes begin with a tablespoon of lard, or duck fat. And I'll consider bacon eating moments to be a tribute to my grandparents!

P.S. This past week seemed to be “fat week”. With breakfast, I read about Lee’s Ghee, and encountered Lee later the same day at the One of a Kind Show. I bought some of her Ghee with Dates. Poor thing was subjected to a Twitter lambasting for appropriating a food not linked to her culture. The so-called #gheegate finally calmed down with people supporting her right to make and sell this. She says her products are great for cooking / baking (she offers recipes) and with coffee, and on popcorn!

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[Bacon image source]

The Most Gratifying Dish...

"Almost every culture has its own variation on chicken soup, and rightly so - it's one of the most gratifying dishes on the face of the Earth." Yotam Ottolenghi (Source)

It’s fitting that it is Sunday as I write / post this. Growing up, the midday meal on Sunday was always, always chicken soup. The task of making the soup passed from my Grandmother to my Mother. Once I left home, chicken soup did not routinely appear on my own dining table until I had a family. The hosting of family events moved to my home and I inherited the giant soup pot needed to make enough for firsts, and seconds, and "take homes". Eventually, my brother became the maker of chicken soup for family events – and he still makes it regularly for his own family especially in the “brrrr” and “eey” months - September to February.

The recipe has never been written down. It begins with a soup pot and water to which were added full chicken legs (skin on - and sometimes chicken backs, necks if any were on hand). The water was slowly brought to a simmer and this was the absolute most important stage of the soup-making – the cook was not allowed to be distracted. As the water and the chicken warmed, a foamy scum would rise to the surface. Google “foamy scum on chicken soup” if interested in the science. I once heard Julia Child say it was not necessary to skim that off, but in my family we always did, using a little strainer. Once that stage ended, we added carrots in large chunks, celery, a bundle of parsley, salt and whole peppercorns. A whole onion with a layer of skin was added – this gave the soup a warm hue. Also added were thick slices of kohlrabi. (In time, we became privy to the "secret" that both grandmother and mother added some chicken broth powder. We never tracked down the product they used, and as far as I know it no longer exists.)

The soup was served as a broth with noodles – and for family occasions, the noodles were very special - handmade csiga (cheegaw) – the Hungarian word for snails - so-named because of the pasta's inexact resemblance to the creature inside the shell. This pasta was painstakingly made by my grandmother, and then my mother. I can recall helping a few times, but by and large it was a time consuming task my mother undertook as a family occasions approached. My father created a tool that sped up the cutting of the pasta into little one inch squares. He also made the grooved little boards that were used to turn /roll the wee pasta squares. The final step was to spread the “little snails” onto a floured sheet spread over an un-used bed – and there they stayed for several days until thoroughly dry. Now csiga can be purchased at local delicatessens, but they are clearly machine made and a pale imitation of home-made.

Home-made tools

Source and Source

It has been over three years since we ate the last of the handmade csiga, and while I know how to make it and have inherited every single tool, I admit I have not yet been motivated to take on that family tradition. The soup was eaten as clear broth with the csiga. A platter brought to the table served up the “soup chicken”, carrots and kohlrabi that everyone could add to their bowl as they wished.  Mind you, the soup chicken was often the second course – eaten with boiled potatoes and a paradicsom martas – a sauce made of sour cream, flour and a sort of tomato passata (which was home cooked in tomato season and bottled into old beer bottles for use year round).  Oddly, I used to find that sauce to be a bit tart and sprinkled sugar onto it!! Was that weird? I just Googled chicken and sugar – and shockingly there are quite a few recipes that enhance the chicken eating experience with sugar! Who knew!?

It’s a mystery why chicken soup can be so comforting. We make it very often, and for some time have favoured the LooneySpoons version. In this blog post, I am announcing that a new chicken soup recipe has taken the number one spot. It is much closer to the food memory of my childhood. The soup begins with schmaltz – which I could not find, but the internet claimed that goose fat was an acceptable substitute. I have now make this with both duck fat, and also (once I found some) with goose fat. Initially, I could not find matzo meal and so made griz gomboc (greeze gumbowtz) which are Cream of Wheat dumplings - common in Hungarian cuisine. 

Try this recipe for Chicken Soup with Herbed Matzo Balls (or griz gomboc) and if it doesn't leave you feeling comforted, satisfied and gratified, I’ll eat my… soup.

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