Support for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

You may have seen Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution - a new show where the celebrity chef takes on America's "Unhealthiest City." Turns out that this is more than just a TV show. The British Celebrity Chef is compiling a poll to be sent to President Obama to show that Americans want healthier food, both at home and in their schools. Here's the link to sign his petition, or even donate to the campaign if you'd like to:

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Petition

And for those of you practicing evidence-based medici...er... support, here's an article from a British News site outlining Jamie's success in his homeland, specifically boosting grades and decreasing abseteeism in the schools he worked with.

Jamie Oliver's school dinners shown to have improved academic results

Next article is actually going to be a recipe for something markedly less healthy than Mr. Oliver is suggesting.

Tony's Food 101: Basic Technique for Leafy Greens

Maybe you belong to a community supported agriculture (CSA) farm, and just got a bushell of big, tough green leaves. Maybe your next door neighbor is an organic gardening enthusiast with a little too much yield this season. Maybe you read the latest Jamie Oliver book, went out and bought 5 heads of Italian Black Kale and you have no idea what to do with the remaining three or four. There is a simple answer to each of these questions, and it's right on the other side of a pot of boiling water.

Yup. Boil 'em... just not for British amounts of time. Quickly boiling any leafy green vegetable is an easy and healthy way to serve this particular class of food. Now, I'm not disregarding some tried and true recipes involving leafy greens - I am a New Englander, after all (just like this guy). Some of them aren't necessarily the fastest.... and some of them involve large amounts of salted animal fats. The best part about this way of cooking leafy greens is that the actual cooking process is fast and doesn't leave much time for the nutrients these bad boys contain to leech into the water they're cooked in. It also leaves (bu-dum-shinnnng) alot of flavor behind, too.

Flash-boiled greens

• One head of leafy greens for every two people you want to serve. Swiss chard, mustard greens, beet tops, non-baby spinach, kale, dinosaur kale, or any others are perfectly acceptable. Being largely a purist, I leave collard greens and cabbage to the professionals. Wash them well, as sometimes they're a little too farm fresh.
• Good, pungent extra-virgin olive oil. You're not cooking it, per se, so haul out the first-press, unfiltered Italian import you've been keeping in a cool, dark place for just such an occasion.
• A pinch of salt. You don't really need more than this. Don't salt the water either. I don't think I need to go on that tangent again, after the recent national media frenzy.
• Fresh ground black pepper, to taste.
• Either one of three things - A lemon, a pinch of nutmeg, or a whole garlic clove. More on this later.

Fill a stock pot or kettle with water and bring it to a boil (keeping it covered really does make it go faster). Make sure it's at a full, rolling boil. Put the water on as the very very first step of making dinner. As it's heating up, do all the other stuff you need to do, the water will take a little while.

If you picked garlic from the above list, find whatever bowl you're going to serve your greens in. Cut your garlic clove in half and rub the inside of the bowl with the cut half of the garlic. This will scent the greens, but not make you the least popular person at work the next day.

Dunk your leaves in and give them a swirl with a pair of tongs. Watch them closely. They will start to become limp, you don't want them too soft. When they're cooked to a tenderness you happen to like (I tend on the undercooked side out of personal preference), tong them out of the pot and into a collander. Shake them a few times to drain some of the excess water. Put them in a bowl (again, if you picked garlic, into your pre-garlic'd bowl). Toss them with a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt, black pepper and either a squeeze of fresh lemon or some nutmeg. The nutmeg works especially well with spinach.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Vol 1: Bread

Wait!

Don't throw out that week old (maybe two-week old...) half loaf of artisan whole grain organic spelt flour rosemary peasant bread you bought at Whole Foods for $12.65. Just because it's hard enough to be used as an ad hoc construction tool doesn't mean it's not still good.... for something. And by no means should you feed it to geese, pigeons, sparrows or any other variety of hollow-boned pest.

Okay, so what should you do with it? The answer is simple: croutons. You know those crunchy bits of bread you put on salads, right? Well, send the people from Pepperidge Farm packing. Why spend an extra few bucks on a bag of those oily cardbord cubes when you've already spent it on bread you're about to chuck? The only thing standing between old bread and croutons is your oven. Bread also lasts almost indefinitely in crouton form.

The best part of croutons-from-scratch is that you can choose what ever flavors you want. You're not limited to "extra garlic" or "zesty italian." And this choice of flavor is in addition to what ever stale bread you decide to use as a base. Living (mostly) alone, I usually can't go through a loaf of bread before it gets stale, so I do this alot. I've tried a wide variety of herbs, spices, herb-and-spice mixtures*, and a variety of oils against a backdrop of any kind of bread you can imagine. It's next to impossible to screw this up. So, let's get started. Too use a more food-snob-approved term:

House-made Croutons

• What ever old, stale bread you have lying around. Just make sure it's not moldy. Mold may improve some cheeses, but it tends to ruin your croutons (and gross out your friends/family). Good, crusty breads you buy in unsliced loaves work best, but you can do this with odds and ends of the sliced stuff, too. Cut it into cubes of what ever size you want. Mine tend to be on the bigger size.
• Enough olive oil to just coat the bread.
• Salt, black pepper, and what ever other flavorings you want to use. I've had alot of success with dried Herbs de Provence. I've also recently used truffle oil, and that batch came out amazing. Garlic, chili pepper.... really what ever you want is fine.

Figure 35.q - Everything old is new again" - Peter Allen

Preheat your oven to the universal temperature - Bake 350. Toss the bread cubes with enough oil oil to lightly coat them and with any seasonings you want to use. Spread out in a single layer on a cookie sheet. You can put down a layer of foil first, if you're lazy like I am, but I understand it sort of spoils the whole "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" theme. Bake the little bastards until you can smell what ever flavorings you've used emanating from your oven. A half-hour is generally safe for big cubes, 20 minutes for smaller ones. Take them out, let them cool. They will harden into perfect, crunchy little bites. Store them in an airtight container in a cabinet or shelf and use whenever you have a salad. Or soup. Or any other use you could think of for a crouton.

Figure 36.z - Airtight.

Until next week, loyal readers.

*If you happen to be near the place featured in the link - try their Cajun seasoning. It's one of the best I've tried.