menus, January 9, 2013

It ain't necessarily so....

george gershwin

Guess what?

You've just gotten a call from the ghost of Julia Child. She's asked you to take her place as a judge at the  nutritional smackdown between these two main dish all-stars....

 They're using protein, iron, B vitamins and saturated fat to take each other to the mat...er...plate. And the winner is not the one you'd rather eat, but the one you think you ought to eat. 

And your pick? After the feathers stop flying and the hooves stop stomping, who's your New Year's Nutritional Number One?

I'm pretty sure that you'd have to declare it a draw.

That's right. Nutritionally, it's a tie.  I know this surprising fact because last week my friend Linda asked me if the internet knew how to turn her great beef meatloaf recipe into a comparably tasty turkey meatloaf recipe. So, I unleashed my inner research hound and did some digging.

And I found out that when you compare the saturated fat, protein,calories and nutritional benefits of 90% lean ground beef to 90% lean ground turkey, the difference is...

About a dollar a pound.

But, when you compare the taste, well, that's another sort of contest isn't it?

And for most of us, there's a clear winner, and only one clear winner. In taste, texture, looks and smell, hooves down, it's beef.

That's because beef has something turkey is sadly lacking. 

Umami

wait! hold on! I said "Umami", not  "A Mommy"!

 Umami, that indescribable something that makes meat taste meaty,  has been around since the first mastadon was roasted over the first campfire, but wasn't named til around 1908, when it joined bitter, sweet, salty and sour as a taste category. It's packed naturally into lots of things: beef, tomatoes, soy sauce, mushrooms, cheese, and it's absence in poultry is why a turkey burger might leave you wishing for something that tastes like real food.

yeast, tomatoes, cheese. Triple umami greatness.
This is why pizza is pretty much the world's tastiest food.

So, if you're trying to make your fave meatloaf recipe lower in cholesterol and you can afford extra lean (that's 93% lean) ground beef, then give yourself the taste you're hungry for and go with the beef.

Or broaden your protein base by using lean ground turkey and amping the umami. Look at the umami boosting add-ins in this turkey meatloaf recipe- ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, onions, and garlic. I experimented with it a little by adding some finely chopped sauteed mushrooms to deepen the flavor even more, and you know what? It was really not too bad. 

I've learned and unlearned a few other things in the last week that I'm quite eager to tell you about- (I've been all wrong on how taste buds and facebook pages work, trying to make an adjective out of umami is really funny, it's citrus fest time at Central Market...) but I'm holding those proverbial horses til the weekend, because I ought to get to the point and let you in on what we'll be eating this week-

Wednesday:  Lemon Chicken and green beans

I have two meyer lemons in the fridge that I'll be using here- (Meyer lemons! that's one of the horses I'm holding till the weekend) I'll need  leftover chicken on Friday and Saturday, so I've got about 6 chicken breasts marinating in the fridge right now, in one of the bazillion mixtures I found when I googled "all purpose marinade". This has had me grinning all day. I mean really, if it's an all purpose marinade, how many different ones do you need?   

Thursday: Beef Chili

Two recipes here that I'm curious about, and I won't know which one's for dinner till I know how many random pieces the day will shake itself into. If the day is crazy, and time is playing rough, it'll be this fast one and if time is feeling friendly, it'll be this slow one. Get a load of that crazy second recipe! The spices are added at three different times in the cooking process because the chili-cookoff-award-winning recipetor (stop with the puzzled look. What else should we call a recipe inventor?) says that seasonings like cumin change flavor the longer they cook. I'm hoping for a day with enough time to test that out.

Friday: chicken in mushroom sauce

It's been awhile since we had anything all nice and gravyish spooned over something nice and carby. I'm really looking forward to trying this out. I'll be using whatever mushrooms are least expensive, along with leftover chicken and some sort of gluten free thing, probably rice, instead of noodles.

Saturday: vermicelli noodle bowl 

My son's amazing girlfriend has been making me hungry (and a little discontent about living so far away) by posting pics of the beautiful noodle bowls she's been assembling, so I'm going to use the last of the leftover chicken and try making them too.  Don't get hung up on the idea of fish sauce, okay? It doesn't taste like fish any more than a Caesar Salad tastes like a dead Roman emperor- it's just another way of umami-ing things up. But if the idea of fish sauce just gives you the not-in-a-good-way shivers, use soy sauce instead. No big deal. 

Sunday: Turkey Meatloaf 

A Turkey meatloaf  from the venerated ovens of America's Test Kitchen. You wanna know something? I'm not sure why, but I'm assuming I won't like it. Which is why I'm going to try it. Because I think my aversion to ground turkey began in the 80's, when it first became A THING YOU SHOULD BE EATING INSTEAD OF WHAT YOU WANT TO EAT. I think maybe my dislike is just a closed-minded juvenile contrariness. Well, stubbornness can work two ways, even in the same cook. And I am stubbornly determined to challenge my turkey-ist assumptions. At least once. 

And that's what I've been thinking about all week. The weight of our assumptions-

How we grow up, and pack into our lives one unexamined, untested assumption after another about what's tasty, what's yukky, what's healthy, what's harmful,what's important, what's trivial, who's smart, who's stupid, who's wrong, who's right...

until it all gets pretty heavy- 

(and it doesn't even have wheels)

Maybe, just maybe, there'll be a time this week when one of those old assumptions that weigh you down will come out of the shadows and show itself. And if you have the time to pin it down and find out if it's telling you the truth, maybe you'll find out that you and the world around you are more right and more ruined and more beautiful than you ever assumed possible.

Those assumptions-especially the heavy ones, the ones that hurt? Take a closer look, okay? Because, well, they ain't necessarily so...