Day 2 – woke up with very thirsty feeling. Maybe the food or maybe I went to bed late last night. Got up around 8:10am, starting drinking water and read protocol “Quick Start Guide”, I found out I had to take 4 tablets per day – 2 in the morning and 2 at night.
Category Archives: Food and drink
Mussels with Sherry, Saffron, and Paprika
brought to you by epicurious.com and NutritionData.com
Calories 334; Total Fat 14g; Carbohydrates 23g
This elegant dish of shellfish steamed in an aromatic broth of garlic, shallots, sherry, and saffron is ready in just 30 minutes. Mussels are very high in vitamin B12 and iron (both of which help prevent anemia), as well as the antioxidant mineral selenium. They also provide DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid that promotes healthy brain function. Serve over pasta or with a crusty loaf of bread to soak up all the garlicky juices.
Go to the healthy recipe on epicurious.com
Photograph By: Kana Okada
Nutritional Information
Amounts per serving plus the % Daily Value (DV) based on a 2,000 calorie diet:
- 334 Calories (17%)
- 14g Total fat (21%)
- 2g Saturated Fat (10%)
- 40mg Cholesterol (13%)
- 571mg Sodium (24%)
- 23g Carbohydrate (8%)
- 1g Fiber (6%)
- 19g Protein (38%)
See the full nutritional analysis from NutritionData.com
Recipe: Chestnut Cheesecake
Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes, plus overnight refrigeration
FOR THE BASE:
4 ounces crushed graham crackers or 1 1/8 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 tablespoon soft butter
1½ tablespoons sweetened chestnut purée or spread (available in many supermarkets and specialty food stores)
FOR THE CHEESECAKE:
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
¾ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon lime juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 to 2 tablespoons rum
1 cup sweetened chestnut purée
FOR THE CHEESECAKE SYRUP:
¼ cup rum
1 tablespoon sweetened chestnut purée
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter.
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a kettle with water and place over high heat.
2. Prepare base: In a food processor, combine crushed graham crackers or cracker crumbs, butter and chestnut purée. Process until mixture has consistency of wet sand. Press into bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Refrigerate until needed.
3. Prepare cheesecake: In a heavy-duty mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth. Mix in sugar. Add eggs and egg yolks one by one. Add sour cream, lime juice, vanilla extract and rum, mixing until smooth and creamy. Using a rubber spatula, fold in chestnut purée until thoroughly incorporated.
4. Cover outside of a springform pan with a layer of plastic wrap so that bottom and sides are covered. Do the same with foil, covering layer of plastic to make a watertight casing. Place pan in a roasting pan and pour in cheesecake filling. Add enough boiling water from kettle to come just over an inch up the side of cake pan. Bake until just set on top with a hint of wobble underneath (cake will continue to cook as it cools), about 1 hour. Remove from roasting pan and cool to room temperature on a rack. Refrigerate overnight before unmolding.
5. Prepare syrup: In a small saucepan, combine rum, chestnut purée, sugar and butter. Place over medium heat and stir until melted. Boil for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
6. Remove cheesecake from refrigerator to remove chill before serving. Cut into slices and drizzle each with a spoonful of syrup.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings.
Recipe: Molten Chocolate Babycakes
Time: 25 Minutes
4 tablespoons soft unsalted butter, more for greasing dishes
12 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (preferably with 70 percent cocoa solids)
4 large eggs
Salt
¾ cup superfine sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup flour.
1. Place a baking sheet on center rack in oven and heat oven to 400 degrees. Butter insides of six 6-ounce heatproof glass or ceramic baking dishes. (If using soufflé dishes, line bottoms with parchment paper; dishes with flared sides will not need lining.)
2. In a small saucepan over low heat or in a microwave oven, melt chocolate; set aside to cool slightly. In a medium bowl, beat eggs together with a pinch of salt until frothy; set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream together 4 tablespoons butter and the sugar. Gradually add egg mixture, then vanilla. Add flour and mix well. Add chocolate and blend until smooth.
3. Divide batter among six baking dishes and arrange them on baking sheet hot from the oven. Bake until firm and dry on surface, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove dishes from oven and immediately invert cakes onto small plates or shallow bowls. Serve hot.
Yield: 6 servings
Recipe: Risotto With Squid Ink and Ricotta
Time: 1 hour
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
4 or 5 bunches green onions, white and light green part only, finely sliced
1 pound 5 ounces Arborio rice
1 tablespoon squid ink (see note)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 cups dry red Italian wine
5 cups vegetable stock or broth, heated
Salt and pepper, to taste
Hot red pepper flakes, to taste
1 pound 5 ounces cleaned cuttlefish or squid, coarsely diced
1¾ cups fresh ricotta, preferably sheep’s milk (see note)
¾ cup milk
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil.
1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Heat ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon oil in heavy pan and sauté onions for about 2 minutes over medium-high heat.
2. Stir in rice and continue cooking 3 or 4 minutes until rice absorbs some oil. Stir in ink and continue stirring to mix well, about a minute. Add tomato paste and wine and cook over high heat to reduce by about half.
3. Add 2 cups of stock and cook quickly over medium-high heat, stirring often. When most of liquid has evaporated, add another two cups of stock and repeat, seasoning with salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes, to taste. If rice is not yet tender, add another cup and repeat. Two minutes before the rice is ready, stir in the cuttlefish.
4. Mix ricotta with half of milk and extra virgin olive oil to make it easily spreadable; add more milk as needed (this step can be done while stock is reducing).
5. Spoon rice mixture into a round or oval casserole and spread the ricotta mixture evenly over the top. Bake for about 10 minutes. If cheese does not brown, run under broiler for about 2 minutes.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings.
Note: Sheep’s milk ricotta is available at specialty cheese stores and Italian markets, and squid and its ink are available at fish markets.
Recipe: Simple Roast Turkey
Time: 1½ to 2½ hours, plus half-hour’s resting before serving
1 12- to 14-pound turkey, preferably fresh, giblets removed; if turkey was frozen, thaw completely in refrigerator (this can take days)
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
3 stalks celery, each cut crosswise into two or three pieces.
1. A half-hour before cooking, take turkey out of refrigerator. Pat dry with paper towels. Place in large roasting pan and set aside. Place rack on lower third of oven; heat oven to 425 degrees. Higher heat speeds roasting without too much splattering and smoking.
2. Mix salt and pepper together and rub mixture all over skin and inside cavity of turkey. Stuff cavity with onion and celery. If you wish, tie legs together with kitchen twine and tuck wingtips under wing, but this will slow cooking time.
3. Put turkey in oven, uncovered. After a half-hour, remove turkey and place a sheet of foil over breast, crimping edges to side of roasting pan. Place pan back in oven.
4. After another hour, remove turkey from oven, take off foil and discard. Do not baste. Begin checking temperature by inserting a meat thermometer straight down into fleshiest part of thigh, where it meets drumstick. Check a second spot, then remove thermometer.
5. Place bird back in oven, checking periodically until thermometer reads about 165 degrees. Total cooking time should be 1½ to 2½ hours, depending on size of turkey. If bird is larger than 14 pounds, keep foil on longer.
6. Remove pan from oven and cover turkey with fresh foil and then a damp kitchen towel. Let it rest for a half-hour before carving. Turkey will continue to cook and juices will set into meat.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings.
A Plan That Leaves Time for the Parade
By KIM SEVERSON
November 16, 2005 – New York Times
Here are tips that will make roasting your turkey faster and easier.
PREPARING THE TURKEY Don’t wash it, although this might go against your better judgment. The heat of the oven will kill any surface pathogens, and rinsing only splashes bacteria around the kitchen. Better to take the wrapper off in the sink, put the turkey in the roasting pan and pat it dry with a paper towel.
TYING THE LEGS Using a piece of cotton string to tie the legs makes a prettier bird, but for cooking speed, leave them untied. If you carve the turkey and put it on plates in the kitchen, the way the bird looks won’t matter.
START AT ROOM TEMPERATURE Allow the turkey to sit out for at least a half-hour before roasting. This will speed the cooking time.
TENTING About half an hour into the roasting, cover the breast with a foil tent. This will slow the heat and help keep the breast moist.
IF PAN SMOKES Pour a little water or stock into the bottom of the pan if the juices start to burn.
BASTING Resist the urge; the skin comes out crispy and bronze without it. Opening the oven door lowers the temperature and adds into the roasting time.
USE A MEAT THERMOMETER About an hour and a half into roasting, begin testing the temperature. Insert a meat thermometer into the thigh, perpendicular to the pan, at the point where the drumstick meets the thigh. Test again in the meatiest part of the thigh, horizontal to the pan. Keep checking until you get a couple of readings of 165 degrees.
REST THE BIRD When roasting is done, take the turkey out of the oven and tip it so that juices from the bird drain into the pan. Place the turkey on a platter, cover it completely with foil and place a damp kitchen towel over the foil to help keep in the heat. Let rest for a half hour. During standing time, the internal temperature continues to increase by as much as 10 degrees. Resting allows juices to set in the meat.
AFTER SLICING Pour a small amount of warm stock over the sliced meat to moisten it before serving. This can help rescue dry white meat in particular.
The Pilgrims Didn’t Brine
By KIM SEVERSON
November 16, 2005 – New York Times
I have done foolish things in pursuit of a delicious Thanksgiving turkey.
I have cooked them in the style of countries I’ve never visited.
I’ve dismembered them raw.
I have stood in a cold garage drinking beer while men I barely knew poked at one floating in a caldron of hot oil.
I’ve hunted down 12 perfect juniper berries and submerged them, along with a turkey raised more carefully than a Montessori student, in a tub of salted water overnight.
I’ve massaged butter into breasts and stuffed sage leaves under skin.
I’ve soaked cheesecloth in butter and flipped hot carcasses from one side to the other.
Several weeks ago, a friend gently suggested that serious cooks spend entirely too much time thinking about the Thanksgiving turkey.
Naturally, I thought about that.
Is the time and money spent on a gamy American Bronze heritage turkey worth it when most guests prefer the bland flavor of the Broad-Breasted White they grew up eating? Is 24 hours of preparation excessive, when that time might be better spent on traditional holiday pursuits like creating a spectacular pumpkin pie or actively ignoring your family?
On the Thanksgiving plate, turkey is never the star nor the most memorable dish. Turkey recipes are not passed down through generations, like your grandmother’s cranberry relish.
No one remembers the turkey unless it is bad.
This year I set off to see how simply I could roast a turkey and still have good results. I wanted something neither dry nor taxing.
To start, I took a page from Barbara Kafka, who in her 1995 book "Roasting: A Simple Art" advocated a two-hour turkey in a 500-degree oven. But my oven is never pristine enough for that kind of heat, and the result – even with the cleanest of ovens – is a screeching smoke alarm and a greasy kitchen. I would go high, but not that high.
Next I called Harold McGee, the science and food writer who recently revised his encyclopedic "On Food and Cooking."
"How simple do you want to keep it?" he asked. Very, very simple, I said.
The goal, he pointed out, is to get the leg meat to at least 165 degrees, when the connective tissue is cooked and the pinkness has just faded. But straight-up roasting would leave the breast dry at any temperature much past 155.
"The trick is to establish an unevenness in the temperature of the two different parts, the breast and the thighs," he said. The easiest way is to set the turkey on the counter and strap a couple of ice packs on the breast about an hour or so before roasting.
This year, Mr. McGee plans to increase the effect by starting the bird breast side down in a cold pan with cold vegetables and placing a sheet pan on the floor of the oven to slow the heat from the bottom. Then he’ll flip the turkey halfway through cooking.
That didn’t seem so simple. So I called Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. He has long advocated brining, an overnight soak in salted water. I have brined many times. Even with a mediocre, overcooked bird, the process makes the meat well seasoned and juicier.
But this year I didn’t want to wrestle with plastic garbage bags and coolers and bags of ice. I wanted simple.
"You can buy a frozen, pre-basted Butterball which is essentially brined and thaw the puppy out," he said. "You do have to butterfly it and rip the backbone out, but that’s not too difficult. Shove it on a broiler pan at 450 degrees. That’s about as painless as it gets."
I had hoped to avoid butchery projects. So I called Sara Moulton, the Gourmet magazine chef and television personality whose new book, "Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals," is all about assuring people they can cook excellent food easily.
"I do the old 325 degrees," she said. "I don’t do anything funny."
She likes a big turkey, maybe 16 pounds. She stuffs it, and prepares a separate pan of dressing to cook outside the bird. If the stuffing doesn’t get hot enough (it ought to reach 165 degrees), she removes it from the bird, then puts it back in the oven.
"The biggest problem people have is that they follow those charts and they are the vaguest things in the planet," she said.
The key is a good meat thermometer. Some chefs take the turkey out when the legs hit 155, others at 165 degrees or 170 degrees. The U.S.D.A. says the thigh meat should be 180 degrees, which is insanely high but hospital safe. Ms. Moulton is not willing to buck the U.S.D.A. in print, but I am. Bringing the thighs to at least 165 degrees seems the best compromise between food safety and avoiding breast oblivion. The temperature will continue to rise as you let the turkey rest for 30 minutes before carving, another tip from Ms. Moulton.
Finally, I called my mother. She has been roasting turkeys for 50 years. It’s always the same. A little onion and celery in the cavity, some salt and pepper and a constant 350-degree oven.
So, Mom, why were some of our family’s Thanksgiving turkeys terrific and others, well, not so good?
"If you get a good turkey, you’ll have a good turkey," said my mom, who always buys whatever is on sale. "If you get a bad turkey, it’ll be a bad turkey."
So I tested three different turkeys. Since a kosher bird is already salted as part of the processing, I though it might be the shortcut I was looking for. It offered juicy meat, but not so juicy to justify all the time I spent pulling feather shafts from the skin. Plus, depending on where you live, a kosher bird can be hard to find.
I tried a frozen supermarket bird. It was inexpensive, but I didn’t like the taste or quality of the meat or the industrial-style methods used to raise it.
In the end, I settled on a fresh bird from Pennsylvania sold by my local butcher. For my money, any turkey that has been allowed to forage naturally and was raised close to where you live is the best option, both for flavor and politics.
As for cooking methods, I borrowed a little bit from everyone. I settled on a roasting temperature of 425 degrees, which seemed like a reasonable compromise between high-heat advocates and old-fashioned, slow-roasters. I started with a room-temperature turkey and I tented the breast with foil. No flipping, no basting.
When the thigh hit 165 degrees, I let the turkey rest for a half-hour, covered with foil and a slightly damp kitchen towel, to allow the juices to settle back into the meat.
For a 12- to 14-pound turkey, my method takes about two hours, which should leave plenty of time to do more important things this Thanksgiving. Like call your mother.
Recipe: Celery Root Soup With Spiced Maple Vinegar
Adapted from Perry St.
Time: 50 minutes
1 celery root, about 1½ pounds, peeled and cut in chunks 1 cup heavy cream
Salt
½ cup maple syrup
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
Freshly ground white pepper.
1. Place celery root in a saucepan with 3 2/3 cups water and the heavy cream. Add 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste, bring to a simmer and cook until celery root is very tender, about 35 minutes.
2. While celery root cooks, combine maple syrup, vinegar, allspice and cloves in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer and remove from heat.
3. When celery root is tender, purée contents of saucepan. Reheat and season to taste with salt and white pepper. Remove from heat and cover until ready to serve.
4. To serve, pour 1½ tablespoons of warm maple syrup mixture in each of 8 teacups. Reheat soup and ladle over syrup. Serve at once.
Yield: 8 small servings.
A Lovely Starter With a Hidden Surprise
November 16, 2005 – New York Times
In October, when summer’s persistence made it seem as though we would never want to wear tweed or eat butternut squash, I had lunch at Perry St., Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new restaurant in the West Village.
To whet the appetite, Greg Brainin, the executive chef, offered cups of warm, creamy celery root soup with a surprise at the bottom: vinegar-laced spiced maple syrup.
As I spooned the syrup through the delicately earthy soup, I longed for leaves to start falling. It was a recipe I had to have for Thanksgiving.
But celery root and maple?
"When I tasted the celery root plain, I got hints of maple flavor, pineapple and white truffle," Mr. Brainin said. "I decided to go with the maple, enhancing that component but without making it too sweet."
As a first course the soup could be served by the bowlful, but knowing what else will burden the holiday dinner plate, a small cup of this lovely starter would provide ample satisfaction and set the palate up for the rest of the dinner. Bless that splash of vinegar.
The soup would welcome a complex but somewhat modest red wine, a pinot noir with good acidity, for example, as easily as it would an elegant white like a gewürztraminer or a riesling with a mellow touch of fruit, or a rich sauvignon blanc.
My sweet rabbit hole... 