A Guide to Supermarket Olive Oil

When I was growing up, if you wanted to buy a bottle of olive oil – or “salad oil,” as they often called it in those days – you'd better live in a big city with a thriving Italian neighborhood because otherwise you weren't going to find any in your local supermarket. And there was no Internet back then, kiddies.

Nowadays, the places I shop have so many shapes, sizes, and varieties of olive oil that they practically fall off the shelves. One of my favorite markets even has an olive oil tasting bar set up where you can sample the various wares before you make a purchase.

All because a few years ago somebody let slip the secret that Mediterranean cultures have known for centuries: olive oil is good for you.

Now, I'm gonna do us all a favor and not do a twenty page in depth study on olive oil, although I easily could. I could go on and on about the olive, or olea europaea, in its Italian, Spanish, Tunisian, or Greek varieties. You can also find them in Israel, Palestine, South Africa, Peru, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and good old California, USA.

So let's just do a quick, down-and-dirty guide to supermarket olive oil, okay?

First things first: how do you choose a good quality olive oil?

In my totally biased opinion, the best olive oil comes from Italy. Contrary to popular thought, Italy is not the world's largest producer of olive oil. Spain is. Italy's production is actually fairly modest, but it has the distinction of being the world's largest exporter of olive oil. Now, I've been writing a lot about authentic Italian food products lately and how consumers can identify them. There are no fewer than forty varieties of olive oil that are produced in Italy and have been afforded PDO (or DOP if you're using the Italian translation) protection.

You won't find many of these on your average American supermarket shelf. Mostly because they're really expensive. Instead, you're going to see one of two labels: “Product of Italy” or “Packed in Italy.” The former means the oil was bottled in Italy using exclusively Italian olives. Sometimes you'll find an IGP seal on some of these bottles.

The latter label means that the oil is bottled in Italy but may be a blend of olives from other regions. Italy buys lots and lots of Spanish olive oil and blends it with its own oil as well as with some from Greece, Turkey, and other areas, producing a nice standard product, the taste of which varies very little from year to year. From a quality standpoint, this cheaper blended product is often preferred on the world market over the more expensive pure oils produced exclusively in Italy. (A little tip: even if the front label says “Italy” on it, check the back label, where you'll usually find the actual country of origin printed in really small type.)

The next big question for most consumers is “what's with all the 'virgin' and 'extra-virgin' and 'first cold-pressed' and all that stuff?”

The “virgin-ness” of olive oil is determined by the processing. Any version of “virgin” means that the olives have been hand or mechanically picked and processed within a day of harvest through means that are completely natural. No chemicals or applications of heat. You wash 'em, crush 'em or spin 'em, and filter 'em – and that's it. The olives are either pressed to a paste through special mats by big stone presses or spun in a centrifuge. The resultant oil is then filtered to remove impurities. This process is referred to as the first cold-pressing, a rather misleading phrase since there is no such thing as a second cold pressing.

Here, again, I could go into pages of detail about labeling regulations and adulteration problems and fraudulent production and distribution practices, but I'll try instead to stick to the point of discussing what you're likely to see on common grocery store shelves.

There are several “virgin” categories to contend with: extra-virgin, fine virgin, and ordinary virgin. All are reflections of the finished product's organoleptic properties, a designation of flavor, color, and bouquet as defined by the International Olive Oil Council in Madrid.

(By the way, the United States does not subscribe to the codes and standards established by the IOOC, opting instead for its own outdated and imprecise USDA regulations adopted back in 1948 before the Council was formed. Although some California producers have urged the USDA to adopt IOCC standards, this has not yet occurred, so quality in US markets remains somewhat inconsistent.)

The cold pressing of olives results in a naturally low acid oil. Extra-virgin oil can have an acidity level of no more than 0.8% and must rate at least a 6.5 on a ten point organoleptic scale. Extra-virgin oil has a rich, fruity flavor and a color that ranges from a greenish-gold to a bright green. This is the stuff you want to use for applications where taste is important.

Fine virgin olive oil is also cold-pressed. It has an organoleptic rating of 5.5 or more and an acidity of 1.5 percent or less. Ordinary virgin, or just plain “virgin” olive oil, only has an organoleptic rating of 3.5 or more and acidity of 3.3 percent or less, but it is still capable of maintaining acceptable levels of purity and quality. You don't see much of either of these grades in regular grocery stores.

You will see a lot of “pure” olive oil on store shelves. This is the next grade down from the “virgin” oil category. It is a refined oil produced by running low quality virgin oil through charcoal and other chemicals and filters. Then a little extra-virgin oil, usually about 5%, is added in to make the product taste like olive oil. Its high smoke point and dull flavor make it okay for use in frying and sauteing, but you really shouldn't use it for sauces or salads or any finished dish that you want to have a nice, rich olive oil taste.

Time out for debate: Many, many cooks keep both extra-virgin and pure olive oils on hand. The common practice is to cook with the latter and finish with the former. Olive oil has a relatively high smoke point to begin with, at least when compared to butter, lard, or vegetable shortening. (The smoke point refers to the temperature at which a cooking fat or oil begins to break down.) The more refined the olive oil, the higher the smoke point becomes. So pure olive oil does lend itself slightly more to frying than extra-virgin. The actual smoke point varies depending upon who you ask, but with a consensus figure of around 400°, you're already looking at higher temperatures than are usually employed in frying foods, so smoke point is rather a moot point, isn't it? Mario Batali, for one, swears by using extra-virgin oil for all applications from frying to finishing. Others demur, citing the cost factor. Why use cups and quarts of the good stuff when the cheaper stuff works just as well? But, the devil's advocate position allows that stocking two kinds of oil is equally expensive. Take your pick.

Anything labeled “light” olive oil is generally a waste of money. It's a refined oil from which all but the merest hint of flavor has been removed. Because most Americans believe that adding the word “light” to anything makes it healthier, they buy up gallons of “light” olive oil for what they suppose to be its greater health benefits. I mean, it says “light,” right? Sorry, folks, but the only thing “light” olive oil is light on is taste. Seriously. I'm not being subjective. That's exactly what “light” olive oil is supposed to be; a lightly flavored alternative to real olive oil designed for people who don't want the full flavor of olive oil in their cooking. As far as calories and fat content are concerned, “light” oil is no “lighter” than any other.

Don't believe me? Check the nutrition labels on a couple of national brands. A tablespoon of extra-virgin contains 120 calories, all of them from fat. There are 14 grams of fat, 10 of them monounsaturated, 2 of them polyunsaturated, and 2 of them saturated. No trans fat, cholesterol, or sodium. The stats on the bottle labeled “pure” olive oil are identical. And now, drum roll, please, the data on “light” olive oil......is absolutely the same! So if you are buying “light” olive oil because you think it's better for you, think again.

(Just in case you are curious, the breakdown on canola oil is nearly the same; 120 calories, 14 grams broken down as 9:4:1. Vegetable oil has the same calorie content and the same fat grams, distributed in a ratio of 3:8:2. The blended stuff – same calories and fat, 7:5:1.)

I once saw some pomace oil in a natural foods store and I don't know why. Pomace is the lowest quality olive oil product that is still edible. That's why it's labeled as “pomace;” it's so inferior that it can't legally be called “olive oil.” Pomace is what you have left after you've pressed everything good out of the olive. It's essentially the husk of the olive that has been chemically refined to squeeze out the last vestiges of oil. You don't usually see it in regular grocery stores – I still don't know why a “natural” food store would carry it. But some really cheap restaurants have been known to use it for frying.

The bottom rung on the ladder is reserved for lampante oil, which is non-edible and is used mainly for industrial purposes. The word “lampante” comes from olive oil's ancient use as a fuel in oil-burning lamps. I've never actually seen it in a retail store of any kind, but it is an oil made from olives.

The bottom line from my point of view is to go with Mario Batali and just use one kind of oil for everything. Simplicity is the soul of Italian cooking, after all. That said, if simplicity is the soul, then quality is the body, so buy the best extra-virgin oil you can find and afford. Check the labels for points of origin, but more importantly, let your tastebuds be your guide. If you can find a store like Whole Foods that lets you sample the various oils available for purchase, by all means taste and compare until you find an oil you absolutely love, then buy it and use it in all your recipes – sauces, marinades, dressings, toppings, and anything else you'd use oil for. Stay away from “light” olive oil. If you want to change up the flavor profile, blend extra-virgin oil with a little canola oil or with some butter.

Regardless of what kind you get, olive oil should always be stored in cool, dark places in airtight bottles. The optimum temperature for storing olive oil is right around 60°, but average room temperature is okay. You can refrigerate it, but don't. One particularly rough winter when my central heat was on the fritz, my kitchen temperature dipped to around 40° and my olive oil congealed right on my counter top! But when things warmed up, it was just fine. But there's really no point in cold storage. Olive oil will eventually degrade and go rancid over time. Not in my kitchen, of course, where a bottle seldom lasts more than a couple of months, but time, temperature, light, and air are the enemies of most food products, olive oil included.

Homer referred to olive oil as “liquid gold.” Its ceremonial and culinary uses date back to the beginnings of recorded history. Isn't it time to include some in your pantry?

Recipe: Eggless Fresh Pasta

I was talking with a friend recently. We were discussing the glories of Italian cuisine and especially of beautiful fresh pasta dishes. As it turns out, he's never had one! Poor guy, he's allergic to eggs and, while he enjoys pasta dishes made from dried pasta, he's never been able to find a fresh pasta recipe that wasn't made with eggs.

“Not a problem,” I told him, and passed along this recipe for an eggless pasta dough made from nothing more than flour and water. He tried it, he loved it. You will, too.

PASTA DI SEMOLA

(An Eggless Pasta Dough)

2 cups semolina flour

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 to 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

Mound the flour in the center of a work surface. (I like a large wooden cutting board.) Make a well in the middle of the flour and add the water a little at a time, stirring with a fork (or with your hands) until a dough starts to form. As you incorporate the water, keep pushing the flour up to retain the well shape. When about half of the flour is incorporated, the dough will begin to come together in a shaggy mass. Start kneading the dough, using primarily the palms of your hands. You may need a little more water if the dough seems too dry. Add just a little at a time. Remember, it's easier to moisten a dry dough than it is to dry out a wet dough.

Once the dough forms a cohesive mass, continue kneading it for a few minutes minutes more (7 or 8 minutes should do it), dusting the board with flour as necessary. Go easy on the flour, though. Too much can change the texture and character of the dough, which should be elastic and a little sticky.

Form the dough into a ball and wrap it in plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes before using.

At this point, you can roll and cut the dough by hand or you can use a pasta machine. You can also make the dough in a food processor if you're in a hurry, but you lose out on a lot of the fun of making fresh pasta.

Makes about 1 1/4 lbs of pasta.

A couple of variations of note: some people add a touch of olive oil and/or a little salt when making the dough. Okay, do what makes you happy. I like the simpler ingredients. Some folks wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the refrigerator rather than leaving it out at room temperature. I've tried it both ways and it works both ways. And some people use all semolina or all all-purpose flour. Not me. I like the texture and performance of the blend.

Mangiare bene, i miei amici!

A Tip for Freezing Foods

This Tip Really Sucks!

I have a quick tip to pass along. It's not original. In fact I can't remember whether I stole it from Alton Brown or Cook's Illustrated, but just in case you don't watch Alton or read Cook's, here it is.

Everybody knows – don't you? – that air is the main cause of freezer burn. And yet, 99.9% of people just toss fresh cuts of meat, leftovers, etc. into Ziploc bags and throw 'em in the freezer. A few weeks later, they take the food out only to find it has turned an unappetizing color and is covered in ice crystals.

What has occurred is that the water molecules in your food have made contact with the air trapped in the bag. Now, the water molecules are going to freeze anyway. That's the whole point of preserving food in the freezer. But they're supposed to stay inside the food. When your frozen food is improperly wrapped and air pockets are present in the storage bag, the frozen molecules make like Mel Gibson and yell “freeeeee-dommmmm” as they migrate out into all that air space, taking your food's precious moisture content with them. The result – commonly called “freezer burn” – is dry and nasty looking. Oh, it's generally okay to eat, but it's going to be dry and nasty looking and you aren't going to be at all thrilled with the taste or texture.

Proper wrapping is essential. Make sure every morsel you put in the freezer is wrapped as tightly as possible in either plastic wrap, aluminum foil, or freezer paper. Then place the tightly wrapped food in a freezer bag, making sure all the air is removed from the bag. I do this by closing all but an inch or so of the bag, then folding and pressing as much air out as possible.

Here's the tip: insert an ordinary drinking straw into the small opening in the bag's seal and close the seal around the straw. Now suck out whatever air remains in the bag, then quickly withdraw the straw and seal the bag. It's not going to be a perfect vacuum, but it'll be pretty close and your food will stand a much better chance of resisting freezer burn and staying fresher longer.

Oh, and don't forget to label and date your frozen food. Nothing lasts forever, even in the freezer. Refer to any one of a number of websites for information on the storage life of frozen foods. The USDA has one such site at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/focus_on_freezing/index.asp.

Applying An Egg Wash

If you're not into baking, all sorts of weird images probably come to mind when you hear the term “egg wash.” If you are, however, familiar with baking breads, rolls, pie crusts, and other pastries, you likely already know that an egg wash is a mixture of beaten eggs and a liquid that are brushed onto the surface of said items before baking in order to give the finished crust extra brownness, crispness and/or shine. The liquids involved are generally milk or water.

Before we get into how to use an egg wash, let's take a minute to discover how it works. Eggs and milk both contain proteins and amino acids, as well as certain sugars, that react with one another in the presence of high temperatures – the kind generated by your oven, for instance.

I promised myself I would not use terms like reactive carbonyl group, nucleophilic amino group, or even increased nucleophilicity when trying to describe what happens when these acids and sugars heat up. A French chemist (naturally) named Louis-Camille Maillard did all that back in the 19-teens when he discovered the process of non-enzymatic browning that bears his name, the Maillard reaction. Suffice it to say that the Maillard reaction is what gives things like roasted meats and toasted breads their nice brown color. (Don't confuse this with caramelization. Similar process, different chemicals involved.)

Egg washes can be simple or more complex depending upon the desired results. Whole eggs can be used or you can separate yolks and whites. You can achieve different degrees of color and shine by tossing in a little water, milk, and/or salt. A whole egg and a tablespoon or two of water makes for a nice, golden amber colored surface. A whole egg and a pinch of salt makes for a highly shiny surface. A whole egg and one or two tablespoons of milk yield a medium shine. Use just the yolk and one or two tablespoons of water and you get a shiny surface with a nice golden amber color. Egg yolks and a little cream make a shiny surface with a darker brown color. An egg white by itself yields not only a shiny surface, but one with a light brown color and a crispy crust.

Egg washes help seal in flavors and also provide a degree of flavor themselves. Eggs and milk are usually used on sweets while eggs and water are applied to more savory preparations. And egg washes can be employed to help seal doughs for things like calzones and egg rolls so that the fillings don't spill out during baking.

A few important things about egg washes to bear in mind: For the best results, always use the freshest eggs possible. Always make sure the egg is completely beaten; a chunky egg wash will result in a chunky surface texture. Using a whisk instead of a fork will result in a smoother mix. And any additives – water, milk, salt – should be whisked in to fully incorporate them. Egg washes should be applied smoothly and evenly using a pastry brush. And they should be applied with a light touch; remember, you're putting on a mere glaze, not a coat of paint.

Finally, don't try to be frugal and save the leftover egg wash. Toss it and make some fresh stuff if you need it. The sixteen cents or so that you'll spend on another egg is cheaper than a visit to the doctor for treatment of a food-borne illness.

Cottura felice!

Cheap Food Products

The Best You Can Afford vs The Cheapest You Can Buy

Let me tell you about where I shop for food and why. As a card-carrying member of Annoying Food Snobs of America, I only shop at food stores that carry high quality fresh produce, excellent meats and seafood, and top of the line canned, frozen, and packaged goods. My shopping dollars are generally divided among Publix, Whole Foods, Fresh Market, and local farmer's markets and specialty stores.

That's not to say that there aren't other great stores out there. I've also shopped Safeway, Kroger, Albertson's, Harris Teeter, Ingles and a number of other fine supermarkets, but there aren't any of those in my area right now. There is a strange little local chain store that carries an odd variety of top shelf stuff that even Publix doesn't stock mixed in with low end products that Publix wouldn't touch. It's kind of become my local “fallback” store.

I'm not a big purchaser of “health food,” so I don't buy a lot of “regular” groceries at Whole Foods or Fresh Market, but those places can't be touched when it comes to fresh meats, produce, and cheese. Both stores are great supporters of local food producers. Additionally, they offer “tasting bars” for some of the products I use most. You wouldn't get far schlepping down to your local Piggly Wiggly and popping the top on a few bottles of olive oil to see which one you liked best, now would you? Whole Foods lets you sample and choose your favorite. I would – and frequently do – drive fifty miles to get the kind of quality fresh food products that these stores offer.

Conversely, I wouldn't drive around the block to shop at an Aldi or anyplace that has “Sav” in its name; Sav-a-Lot, Sav-a-Ton, Sav-a-Bundle, Sav-Til-It-Hurts. No thank you – save me! I went to one of those places once and had nightmares for a week.

Is it insane to drive to the next town to shop at Whole Foods? Undoubtedly. Is Publix the most expensive store in town? Pretty much. Could I save ten dollars a week by shopping at cheaper stores? Yep. So why don't I? I'll tell you.

For reasons of taste and nutrition, I value good food and will go to extremes to obtain it.

I have never been a big fan of cheap food products. In the early days of my upbringing, a “name brand” could be counted on for quality while generic or “store brands” were notoriously inferior. My mother went to her grave without ever purchasing a store brand item. If the supermarket was out of Green Giant asparagus and all they had in stock was a store brand, Mom would either go to another store or go without. So it’s easy to see where I get my “brand bias.”

However, I am not totally my mother’s son. I don’t reject store brands out of hand just because they are store brands. If the quality is there, I’ll buy a store brand. If not, I won’t. Simple as that. What I won’t do is buy the cheapest, nastiest, bottom-shelf, off-brand garbage that is sold in some of the cheap, nasty, bottom-shelf, off-brand food stores that have sprung up in recent years. My taste buds still have a little dignity. But I have found that store brands carried by some of the high-end chain stores I referenced earlier are equal or superior in quality to the national brands. For instance, I can only think of one or two occasions where I was disappointed enough in a Publix product to go back to a national brand.

“You’re just paying good money for a brand name,” my thrifty friends preach. “All the food we buy comes from the same two or three factories and they just put different labels on it.” I used to feel that people who said such stuff also believed that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus get together at the Tooth Fairy’s house on Friday nights for poker. But with big food conglomerates gobbling up competition in the marketplace as they do these days, who’s to say that these people are entirely wrong?

I know too many people who think that food is food. It goes in one end and comes out the other and if it tastes the same at both ends, who cares? It’s just food. Fuel. Sustenance. Something you have to have in order to keep breathing. Generally speaking, these are the people who shop the aforementioned cheap, nasty, bottom-shelf, off-brand food stores and buy the aforementioned cheapest, nastiest, bottom-shelf, off-brand garbage.

Changing mindsets is difficult. I could no more convince my mother to try a store brand tomato sauce than I could convince others in my family that while they may be saving money by buying the stuff that is a short step above animal fodder, they are sacrificing quality.

I’m not rolling in money. I clip coupons and I hunt bargains. But at the same time, I have learned that there is a vast difference between the best you can afford and the cheapest you can buy.

Cheap food is just that. It’s cheap. It’s not “inexpensive.” It’s not “low-priced.” It’s not “economical.” It’s inferior, second-rate, low-quality stuff made up of substandard ingredients processed and dressed up to taste like the higher quality stuff. It’s a pig in a prom dress, designed to make you feel like you’re saving money even as you deprive yourself of taste and nutritional value.

Of course, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in this discussion is the matter of taste itself. Taste is a very subjective thing. Now, it is scientific fact that some people have fewer taste buds than others. Most people have around 10,000, although some statistics show that women have a genetic proclivity towards having a greater number of taste buds than men. Factors such as disease, smoking and just plain old getting older can affect this number. In fact, research has shown that by age 65, a person can lose as many as half of the taste receptors they had when they were born. So, while something may taste like crap on a cracker to me, it might taste like filet mignon to one of my older, chain-smoking, male relatives.

Another factor to consider is palate sophistication. My wife, for example, grew up in an environment where she ate the “good stuff” while living with one parent and the “cheap stuff” while living with the other. Therefore, she developed a degree of sophistication that enabled her to tell the difference. As she frequently – and correctly – points out, people who, for economic reasons or whatever, have never had the “good stuff” don’t know any better. To them, the “10 for a dollar” macaroni and cheese is perfectly fine because they’ve never had anything else.

Genetics and sophistication aside, economics plays a major role in the way things taste these days.

As I alluded earlier, name brands used to equal quality while store brands were equivalent to junk. It was a matter of perception, which, to most people, is reality. But in their ever-growing desire to increase profits, name brand food manufacturers have been leveling the playing field for the generic brands by simply diminishing the quality of their products through the use of cheaper ingredients. In short, it’s not that the store brands taste better, it’s that the name brands taste worse!

Case in point: When I was a kid in the 1950s and early ’60s, I absolutely adored Kit-Kat candy bars. Made in England by Rowntree, Ltd. and imported to the United States, they were chocolate-covered wafers from heaven! Well, they’re still wafers covered in something pretending to be chocolate, but they now originate at that place where good chocolate goes to die – the Hershey factory.

I am certain that Milton Hershey is spinning in his grave over what has been done to his creation. The Hershey Company, in its quest to satisfy its investors at the expense of its customers, has incrementally destroyed American chocolate manufacturing. The over processed brown garbage that flows off Hershey’s assembly lines resembles chocolate in name only. Increased use of palm oil, corn syrup and other cheap ingredients have gradually changed the flavors and textures that cocoa butter, cane sugar and more costly substances impart to “real” chocolate, resulting in a horribly dumbed-down concoction that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the quality for which Hershey products used to be world-famous. But they’re keeping costs down, by golly!

Spice maker McCormick & Co. is now supplying food companies with cheaper herbs and spices, such as Mexican oregano instead of the pricier Mediterranean herb, and garlic concentrate instead of heavier (and costlier to ship) garlic cloves. And they’re always developing new “flavor blends!” In other words, since the good stuff costs too much, let’s just mix up a few varieties of the cheap stuff and foist it off as a “new blend.” This cheap dreck is showing up in the pre-packaged foods you buy and that you’re probably paying the same price for as when they were using better quality ingredients.

Kraft Foods, once a hallmark of quality, has spent most of the last half-century buying every other food manufacturer in existence. As its acquisitions grow, its quality decreases. Investors don’t care if your Kraft American Cheese Singles are made with yak milk as long as they keep making a profit.

I remember so well the taste of a Tombstone Pizza when it came from a little factory in Medford, Wisconsin. Now that Kraft makes them, they taste pretty much like tombstones.

It used to be a big thing to eat at a Stouffer’s restaurant. I was thrilled when their premium frozen food line was introduced in the late 1960s. The stuff was good enough that NASA fed it to the astronauts on Apollo 11, 12, and 14. Enter the Nestlé Company and its voracious appetite for buying up and dumbing down the competition, and now the food that once fed men on the moon tastes like moon rocks.

How’s your Hamburger Helper tasting these days? Not as good as you remember? General Mills Inc. says that by reducing the number of spice and ingredient pouches in boxes of Hamburger Helper -- and by halving the number of pasta shapes used in the product line -- the company has trimmed manufacturing costs by ten percent. And by how much, do you suppose, have they trimmed the taste of their product?

Oh, and if you were a particular fan of Pillsbury Turtle cookies, you can kiss your pecans goodbye. Walnuts are cheaper.

Food companies say the changes they are making don't affect quality, flavor or nutrition. General Mills says consumers polled actually liked the walnuts just as much as the pricier pecans. (They never asked me.) And their decision to mix the chocolate chips into Pillsbury cookie dough rather than to sprinkle them on top has saved more than five million dollars in annual costs. Yippee!

But if the manufacturers say these changes don't affect quality, flavor, or nutrition, consider this: One of the big breakfast cereal manufacturers recently announced that they were reducing sugar levels in their kiddie cereals to make them healthier. Applause, applause! BUT, they revealed that they are making the changes in small increments over a period of years so that consumers don't notice the changes and stop buying the product! This is a prime example of what food analysts and discerning consumers have long recognized; that by tweaking formulas slowly and almost imperceptibly, you gradually alter the taste, so that after, let’s say, five annual alterations to the original formula, you have something that tastes completely different than it did five years ago. Therefore, slowly and almost imperceptibly, food companies are dulling America’s taste buds to accept the cheaper products they are producing.

Ask Coca Cola about that one. Remind them of “New Coke.” But when “New Coke” fizzled rather than fizzed, did the Coca Cola Company actually go back to its original formula for “Coke Classic?” Nah! They dumped in cheap corn syrup in place of expensive sugar and then tried to sell you on the idea that you were still drinking “The Real Thing.” To quote Star Trek’s venerable Scotty, “Yeah, and if my granny had wheels, she’d be a wagon.”

And it’s not just taste that is a concern. There are significant nutritional changes being implemented through the use of inferior quality ingredients. In the same manner that medieval cooks once employed heavy spices to disguise the often rotten food they prepared, modern manufacturers are loading up their wares with salts, sugars, fats, and other substances not conducive to optimal health in order to disguise the more “cost effective” nature of their product. Meat fillers like soy protein are moving from the “mystery meat” dishes in the high school cafeteria to the packaged foods on grocery store shelves. Like pigs being led to market, we’re all bulking up on fillers – but we’re saving money!

So what’s the solution? Same as it’s always been. Preparing your own dishes from fresh, natural ingredients. It’s healthy, it saves you money, and it tastes good.

Despite all the advertising gimmicks, I don’t remember the last time I bought a blue box of macaroni and cheese. And I have never, even at my most desperate extreme, bought the “10 for a dollar” variety. Why should I? With some good quality cheese – not that orange-colored reconstituted vegetable oil product, – a box of elbow macaroni, a little milk and a little butter, I’ve got better macaroni and cheese that took the same amount of time to prepare and didn’t cost nearly as much per serving.

What do I want on my Tombstone? How about, “He was too smart to fall for silly slogans.” My wife once neglected to remove the cardboard circle from the underside of the frozen pizza before she put it in the oven. No matter. They both tasted about the same. Give me a little flour, water, salt and yeast, some canned tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and some herbs and spices, and I’ll bury your Tombstone.

Sing along now, “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat.” Then watch me blend some natural herbs and spices with chicken bouillon, vermicelli and long-grain rice and you’ll be singing my praises when you can’t tell mine from the packaged “chicken-flavor” product produced by Golden Grain, a subsidiary of Quaker Oats, which, in turn, is owned by PepsiCo. Only mine doesn’t contain hydrolyzed soy protein and corn gluten, monosodium glutamate, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, ferric orthophosphate, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate and riboflavin. Should yours?

Believe it or not, I do have a bottom line and it’s this: you get what you pay for. Is cheap food really worth the cost? I don’t think so.

Stand up for your taste buds, America! If the scientists are right, Mother Nature and Father Time are already conspiring to kill them off. Do you truly want corporate greed to help finish the job?

Start a revolution in your kitchen. Instead of buying the cheapest food you can buy, buy the best you can afford and then cook something fresh and delicious tonight.

The Soffritto – An Italian Culinary Cornerstone

I was watching a rerun of “Molto Mario” the other day. As part of his instruction, Mario mentioned a soffritto and one of his guests/friends asked him, “What's a soffritto?” Good question, and one I've been asked a time or two myself.

Literally translated, soffritto is a conjugation of the Italian verb soffriggere, meaning “to lightly fry” or “to lightly brown,” and is a technique in which relatively low heat is used to “lightly fry” diced aromatics in a small amount of liquid, usually fat.

The soffritto is the first step – the culinary cornerstone – in the preparation of many common Italian dishes, especially soups and sauces. The same word with a different spelling (sofrito) applies to the same technique in Spanish cuisine, although using different ingredients. (The Spanish cousin usually consists of garlic, onion, and tomatoes.)

An Italian soffritto starts out as a battuto, the difference being that a battuto refers to the raw, chopped ingredients while a soffritto happens once you start to cook them. I don't see or hear a lot of general reference to the battuto step. Most people just start out straight from the soffritto.

In the same way that there is no standard “Italian cuisine,” there is no standard soffritto. Regional differences dictate the usage of different ingredients. A basic Southern Italian soffritto is prepared with chopped onions or scallions and sometimes with chopped garlic cloves. In Northern Italy the most common soffritto is made with minced celery, carrot and onion. This is also the common combination employed by the French for a mirepoix, although the proportion ratio usually differs.

In a soffritto, most Italian chefs use equal parts of onion, carrot and celery, whereas the French style sometimes dictates a ratio of 2:1:1. (By the way, if you're into Cajun or Creole cooking, you'll drop the carrots and replace them with green bell peppers and call the resultant combination a “trinity” or sometimes a “holy trinity.”) And what would French cooking be without butter, the fat of choice for a mirepoix?

The typical fat used for a soffritto is olive oil, although this, too, varies by region. In Valle d’Aosta or Piemonte, up near the French border, butter is frequently used for a soffritto, while lard, corn oil or other seed oils are the choice in Lombardia and the Veneto, areas more subject to a Germanic influence.

But more than any other factor, what it all comes down to is the quality of the basic ingredients. As Mario Batali often says, the Italians believe they have a God-given right to the finest and freshest produce available, and they exercise this “right” accordingly.

Whereas cooks in other cultures might think little of using produce that's somewhat limp or wilted just for the sake of “using it up,” an Italian cook would rather cut off his hand than use it to dump inferior vegetables into a pan! Okay, a bit of hyperbole there, but it gets the point across. Fresh ingredients are absolutely essential to a good soffritto.

Equally important is the temperature of the pan. The “Goldilocks Principle” applies; the pan can't be too hot and it can't be too cold. It's got to be “just right.” If the pan is too cool, the vegetables will just soak up the oil and become greasy and heavy, resulting in a greasy, heavy soffritto that will adversely affect the flavor and texture of the finished dish. If the pan gets too hot, you'll sear and caramelize the vegetables, likewise destroying the delicate balance of flavors. Heating the pan over medium heat until the oil just begins to bubble a little is a slightly more reliable method than watching for the oil to start smoking, as different oils have different smoking points.

And the order in which the ingredients are added also makes a difference. After bringing the oil or butter to temperature over medium heat, add the onions and sauté them until they become slightly translucent. If you're using garlic, it should be the next ingredient in the mix. If not, add the celery and then the carrots. The rule of thumb here is to add the strongest flavors first, finishing with more delicate tastes and textures. If you just dump everything in at the same time, the intense flavor of the raw onion will be absorbed into the other ingredients, making everything taste like onions. And since garlic cooks a lot faster than onion, if you put the garlic in first, or even at the same time as the onion, the garlic may quickly turn dark brown and become bitter, ruining the dish. All in all, the entire soffritto should cook gently for about ten minutes, or until all the ingredients are tender.

At this point, you can add mushrooms, parsley, pancetta, prosciutto, olives, tomato products or whatever else your recipe calls for. If you've properly prepared your soffritto, your dish will be rich and flavorful in true Italian fashion.

Buon appetito!

Testing the Freshness of Eggs

You're a Really Good Egg ... or Are You?

You kind of have to wonder about the first human being who, upon observing a hard, brown (or maybe white) ovoid object dropping from the nether regions of a chicken, decided to pick it up and eat it. At least he knew it was fresh….whatever it was.

Although a lot of country folk still keep a few chickens around to produce eggs for the household, most of us townies and city dwellers depend upon our local grocery store to supply us with fresh, wholesome eggs. But since we aren’t actually present when the egg makes its debut, how do we know how fresh that egg really is?

Freshness of an egg is not only determined by the date when the egg was laid, but also by the way the egg has been stored. Thanks to modern processing and transportation, most eggs reach stores within a few days after the hens lay them. They are packaged in cartons designed to protect and preserve them, and these cartons themselves give the first indication of the freshness of the eggs they contain. Egg cartons with the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) grade shield on them, indicating that they came from a USDA-inspected plant, must display the “pack date.” This is the day that the eggs were washed, graded, and placed in the carton. Look for a three-digit code (the “Julian date”) that represents the consecutive day of the year, with January 1 being represented as 001 and December 31 coded as 365. (Do we really have to mention leap year?) Most egg cartons also display a “sell by” date beyond which they should not be sold. According to the USDA, this date can’t exceed 30 days beyond the pack date. Always purchase eggs before their “sell by” date. This is sometimes expressed as an “expiration” date, although the eggs do not truly “expire” on the date indicated.

Proper handling and storage is perhaps the most important factor in determining an egg’s freshness. If a freshly laid egg is left at room temperature for a full day, it will not be as fresh as a week old egg that has been refrigerated between 33° and 40°F from the time it was laid. Refrigerated eggs will keep without significant quality loss for about 4 or 5 weeks beyond the pack date, or for about 3 or 4 weeks after you bring them home. Buy your eggs refrigerated and store them in the refrigerator, in their original carton, as soon as you get home. Store them in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the door.

Why the original carton and why not the door? It’s all about air.

The air cell within a very fresh egg is very small. However, even under refrigeration, eggs slowly lose carbon dioxide, which enlarges the size of the air cell, causing the yolk to flatten and the white to spread. It is because of this air cell that eggs are packaged pointy side down. Egg shells are also very porous. Egg cartons are designed not only to protect their fragile little inhabitants, but to preserve them against air, light, temperature variations, and odors, all of which adversely affect the freshness of the egg. And that’s also why you don’t store them in the door, even if your refrigerator has a nifty egg carton-shaped storage shelf. Every time you open the door, you’re changing the temperature and rattling the eggs around. Being very sedentary creatures, eggs really don’t appreciate all that stimulation and exercise.

So how do you tell if an egg is still fresh? Well, the obvious way is to break it. If an egg has gone bad, your nose will be the first to know. And there are physical and visual cues, as well. A fresh egg is generally heavy and compact. Small air cell, remember? A bad egg, because of a big, bad air cell, will usually feel very light in weight.

Visually, the yolk of a very fresh egg will have a round and compact appearance and it will sit positioned high up in the middle of the egg. The white that surrounds it will be thick and will stay close to the yolk. A cloudy character to the egg white indicates extra freshness, as this cloudiness is actually the aforementioned carbon dioxide. The clearer the egg white, the more the carbon dioxide has dissipated. A less fresh egg will also contain a flatter yolk that may break easily and a thinner white that spreads out quickly. It’s perfectly okay to use these eggs. They’re just not quite as fresh. Very fresh eggs are ideal for frying or poaching, but less fresh eggs can be used in sauces, cake mixtures or omelets, where the shape and texture of the egg is not as noticeable.

An egg that has a pinkish tint to the white has definitely gone round the bend and should be discarded immediately.

It is for all of these reasons that most cooks crack an egg into a separate bowl before incorporating it into other ingredients. If you’ve got a bad egg, you really want to know it before you dump it into your cake mix, soufflé or whatever.

If you just want to know if those eggs that you’ve had in the fridge for a few days are still okay to use without having to break them all open, there is a popular and time-tested method for determining freshness that involves a bowl of water. The USDA tends to frown on it, but people have been doing it for generations.

Here, too, there are variations depending on whether your grandmother used salt in the water and whether she used warm water or cold, etc. The easiest and most popular method involves filling a fairly deep bowl with plain, unsalted cool water and carefully lowering the egg into the water.
A very fresh egg will immediately sink to the bottom and lie flat on its side. This goes back to that small air cell we discussed.

As an egg starts to lose its freshness and as more air enters the egg, it will begin to float and stand upright. The smaller, pointy end will lie on the bottom of the bowl, while the broader, rounder end will point towards the surface. Such an egg is still good enough to use. However, if the egg fully floats in the water and does not touch the bottom of the bowl at all, toss it, as it is probably bad. Big, bad air cell, remember?

Finally, through the marvels of modern science, you can freeze eggs. But not in the shell, please. That follows the same logic as not cooking a whole egg in the shell in the microwave. Unpleasant things happen.

It's best to freeze eggs in small quantities so you can thaw only what you need. An easy way to do this is to store them in an ice cube tray. Once frozen, transfer them to a freezer container and label with the date and number of eggs contained. But don’t just crack them into the tray and stick them in the freezer. There’s a little prep work involved. Crack the egg into a bowl first and gently stir to break up the yolk a little. Don’t whip it up and incorporate a lot of air. Just a gentle stir will do. Then do the ice cube tray trick or store them in some other appropriate container. Eggs can be kept frozen for up to a year and should be thawed in the refrigerator a day or so before you intend to use them. Only use thawed eggs in dishes that will be thoroughly cooked. And be aware that the freezing process will somewhat degrade the taste and texture of the egg.

Egg yolks and egg whites can be frozen separately. To keep yolks from getting lumpy during storage, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt per 1 cup of egg. If you’re planning to use the frozen egg yolks for desserts, use a tablespoon of sugar or corn syrup per cup of egg instead of the salt.

Raw egg whites do not suffer from freezing. No salt or sugar is needed. Just be careful when separating that no yolk mixes in with the white.

You can freeze hard-cooked egg yolks if you want to use them later for toppings or garnishes. Just don’t try to freeze a whole hard-cooked egg. Cooked egg whites are very rubbery to begin with and freezing will only make them more so and they’ll be watery to boot. Not, as Alton Brown would say, “good eats.”

Now that we’ve cracked and unscrambled the mysteries of egg freshness, I wish you, as always, buon appetito.