Your Diet is a Process

Your diet is a continually evolving process. I'm not necessarily talking about a weight-loss diet, although a good, healthy way of eating should put you close to where you need to be on the scale.

Your diet is customized to your frame, your genetic make-up, and your lifestyle. Your diet must evolve because your body and the hormones that control its peak performance change over time. You'd never feed infant formula to a teenager and neither can a senior citizen eat like a teenager.

Your diet is a process but none of us wants it to be a process. Everybody wants it to be a pat, universal set of absolute laws: You HAVE to do the Mediterranean Diet to be really healthy. You HAVE to go low carb. You HAVE TO shun red meat. You HAVE TO do raw foods as often as possible. You HAVE TO go vegetarian...or better yet...vegan. You HAVE to go gluten-free. You HAVE TO, you have to, you have to.

Depending on your body and your physiological needs, you may be compelled to do one of the above-mentioned "have-to's". Then again, you might not.

We're all wired a little differently. Some people can eat pot roast all week long and never feel sluggish or see a spike in their cholesterol. Some people feel positively polluted unless they are eating a vegetarian diet. Some people cannot metabolize any sugar at all, not even fruit. But drop-dead gorgeous Dylan Lauren (fashion designer Ralph Lauren's daughter) practically eats candy for a living promoting her candy store chain, "Dylan's Candy Bar", yet she somehow stays as healthy and lovely as one of her pop's models.

The contradictions are dizzying. So how do you begin to figure out your optimum diet?

Obviously, if a food item makes you break out in hives, upsets your stomach, bloats you, causes you to belch, or interferes with your sleep, you need to severely limit your intake of that item. If you are honest about listening to your body's response signals, you may be disappointed. There are going to be items that you love that just don't love you.

People who are trying to figure out if they have a food sensitivity, separate food into groups and eat only those items in a particular group for one day, while taking notes about how they felt. For example, they'll only do fruits one day, only dairy products another day, only wheat and grains for a day, and so on. This takes a lot of work, but things that don't fully work for you show up pretty readily in this process of elimination.

When you think you've got it...when you are finally eating the way that makes you feel like a well-tuned machine, enjoy your optimum diet to the fullest but do continue to pay close attention. You may cross an invisible threshold in the growth/aging process and what worked for you in your eating habits last year might not work for you this year. Get involved in your own health regimen and never let anyone sell you a bill of (absolute) goods.

Now THAT'S Fancy Cookin'

Sophisticated. In terms of food, the word "sophisticated" conjures up images of impossibly glamorous people going to black tie affairs and teasing their sensitive palates with delicate French food and wines that have veritable pedigrees.

As the American public continues to enjoy a revolution in food, it is fair to say that many of us now have more sophisticated tastes than we did, say, twenty years ago. Maybe you now insist on organic produce. Or grass-fed beef. Maybe you insist on local foods. You might be hard-pressed to think of a world cuisine you have not fully explored. Maybe your friends think that you, too would be an Iron Chef, if it weren't for that pesky day job holding you back.

All of this sophistication regarding our culture of food can be considered fun, exciting, nutritionally beneficial, and inspiring. There is something magical about really well-crafted food...just think about your grandmother's pies, or your anniversary dinner, or something else that literally takes you on a mental and spiritual journey every time you call to mind the flavors associated with it. Those insufferable "foodies" are really doing wonderful things for all of us.

But this sophistication also intimidates the hell out of a lot of other people. So much so, they are willing to dig in their heels and never try anything new because it's weird or the stuff of snobs. And the people who feel intimidated by sophisticated food are not necessarily a bunch of backwoods bumpkins. They exist across every class and social line. They may simply be the conservative sort who'd rather be faced with a devil they know at the table versus a devil they don't.

I wish I could explain that most "fancy cookin'" ain't all that fancy. Because the cooking world owes a huge debt of gratitude to the French (and other Europeans) for their inventive culinary ideas, they often put a difficult handle on a realtively easy technique. The cooking shows on TV, fine food magazines, cookbooks, and more are filled with fearsome terms for easy concepts. For example:

REDUCTION SAUCE: You boil a liquid for a long time so that the flavor gets concentrated.
COMPOUND BUTTER: Softened butter with stuff mixed into it.
FOND: The junk that sticks to the bottom of the pan. You can loosen it up with some liquid if you want...puts some more flavor into your sauce.
CARAMELIZED: When food turns brown...it's on the verge of burning, but never crosses the "burnt" line.
BLANCH: Boil something for less than a minute.
MIREPOIX: A bunch of minced veggies that gives a soup or sauce some flavor. You know how homemade soups always seem to have bits of cut-up carrot, celery, and onion? That's "mirepoix"
MISE EN PLACE: Preparing parts of your recipe and setting them aside ahead of time so they are all ready for you when you are ready to throw them into a hot pan.
To SWEAT an onion: Saute an onion until it gets soft.
SAUTE: To cook in a pan with just a little oil or liquid.
BEURRE BLANC: Butter sauce
BEURRE NOISETTE: Browned butter sauce
POT DE CREME: Pudding.
STOCK: Really good, strong broth.
FOIE GRAS: Goose liver.
EVOO: Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Cookbooks love to throw this one around. Most of the time it doesn't matter if you use "extra virgin" or not. It sometimes doesn't even matter if you use olive oil (some other variety may do)
PATE: Special French meatloaf (ok ok...with special meats, but the concept is there)

You see, it's all pretty much jargon. To be sure, it's lovely, useful jargon with subtle nuances, but the jargon nevertheless points to some item or concept that most people over the age of twelve can readily understand...or accomplish on their own. If you can learn some of the wording, you can learn all of the concepts, and no cuisine will ever be too sophisticated for you.

The Easiest Luxury

I've been really busy since August. In a manner of speaking, this means that the shoemaker's children sometimes go without shoes. I still do a lot of scratch cooking at home, but sometimes I need to coast in order to catch my breath. The need for a break has caused me to present the occasional uninspired dinner here at home. Hey, I'm not a machine.

My imagination had decided that tonight would be a night on the town, complete with fancy dinner. Mi esposo , however, has been working a lot of weekends and working quite hard, I might add. I can tell that his well-being would benefit more from a night on the pillow rather than a night on the town. That's OK...the "town" is not going anywhere. I'll catch up later.

Keep in mind I had a craving for top-notch food. Keep in mind I have to start tomorrow for a short but grueling week of Thanksgiving preparation for (literally) scores of people. The Cliffs Note version is: "I want it all and I want it easy".

This means quiche.

I know there is a school of thought that insists that quiche is a temperamental egg custard that fails as often as it succeeds. Perhaps I break a rule or two (you will never tell by taste) but quiche is my fail-safe entree. Forgive me for boasting, but I once was hired for a hard-to-get cooking job by making the boss a quiche on the fly for my cooking test.

And...(shhhh!!!) I think it's so flippin' easy.

Pie Crust. Check!
Eggs. Check!
Good Cheese. Check!
Onion or other aromatic. Check!
Maybe some meat. Check!
Optional Veg. Check or uncheck.

Throw it all together and put it in a hot oven for 25 minutes and it tastes like the food of the gods.

Remember the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" that was so popular in the early 1980's? Well, I've never met a real man who has much power over a savory pie with fillings like creamy eggs, crispy bacon, and robust cheese and onion. And the girls like it, too (envision a proper luncheon)...including yours truly.

And in the 20 minutes it took me to write this, my drop-dead gorgeous quiche got done. And honey, I don't much care that we didn't go out to the land of the white tablecloth...'cause with a little salad of baby spinach, I'd be hard-pressed to find a better dinner anywhere. So little effort and esposo went back for seconds. :)

xo

Oz and Steak Tartare

When I was in college, I was friends with a guy we all called Oz. "Oz" was a shortened version of some other name that the average Midwesterner could not pronounce. Oz was from somewhere far away. His home land wasn't really a country, he explained. It was a "No Man's Land"...the mountain range between Uzbekistan and...??? Turkmenistan? Russia? Exactly where, I cannot quite recall. But he would glaze over with reverie when talking about home and riding horses in the mountains.

Oz was incredibly striking... almost in a fear-inspiring way. He was very tall, and had long hair, black as pitch, waving down to the center of his back. His skin was not white but neither was it brown. You couldn't really discern any particular ethnicity when you looked at him. And he liked to troll through town in tall boots and sweeping military coats, with that long black hair blowing behind him in the frigid Chicago wind. Oz was very quiet, yet quick to smile.

I mention Oz because he represents the fantastic picture I have in my mind about marauding Eurasian horsemen. Just say "Khan" or "Visigoth" to me and my mind's eye sees Oz galloping in his tall boots through the mountains of Blah-blah-blah-zikstan. Don't you remember being in school and learning about the the Goths, the Voguls, the Huns, and so on and so on? They galloped through Asia, Turkey, the Middle East, Russia, and Eastern Europe putting fear into the hearts of meeker folk.

Legend has it that one of the most feared tribes was the Tatars. The Tatars had many conquests under the leadership of Genghis Khan's grandson, Batu Khan. It is said that when the Tatars descended on a region, the soon-to-be-conquered people could hear the hoofbeats of the Tatar warhorses thundering from miles away..."Tatrrrr! Tatrrrr!"

All that marauding didn't leave a whole lot of time for cooking. The legend explains that Tatars would hunt what they could, throw the meat under their saddles to tenderize during long rides, and they would chop it up finely and just eat it raw in the evenings, on their way to the next pillage. Eating raw beef later became known as "Steak Tartare" (a bastardization of "Tatar")

Is this where we really got our culinary classic Steak Tartare? Honestly, I have no idea. But it is certainly more romantic than some French chef who didn't feel like cooking a nice cut of beef so instead served it raw. For this reason alone, I am going with the legend.

So swept up in the legend was I that I decided to make Steak Tartare tonight. Let me preface this by telling you that I was a vegetarian for 12 years. I have an embarassingly sensitive system and get foodborne illnesses easier than most people, but life is for the living, so I decided to live a little...raw food style.

I started with the butcher at my favorite grocery store:
ME: "Hi there. It doesn't have to be tenderloin, but it could be...but what's the absolute freshest cut of good beef you have? I want to make Steak Tartare."
He gave me something he had pulled off the truck 10 minutes ago and was just cutting into filets. For your reference, I think it was a Delmonico, or rib steak.

I took this home, salted it, sliced it as thin as I could, and then gave it a brief pulse in the food processor. Minced meat in seconds flat. I then formed the meat into a little patty, seasoned with pepper, squeezed half a lemon over it, and just waved some olive oil over the top. For condiments, I chopped a sweet onion, emptied a bottle of good capers, pulled a couple gherkins from a bottle, shaved some fresh parmesan razor-thin, AND put a raw egg yolk on top of the meat (OK. I admit it. I used a pasteurized egg. Chickens are dirty birds.) I pulled out an appetizer knife and some crostini and called mi esposo to come be my witness as I started to sample this uncooked food of the Barbarians.

Raw meat. Raw egg. It's a little scary, right? I bolstered myself with the fact that the Tatars took over A LOT of villages on this diet. That thought gave me some courage and I dug right in.

Oh, my word. Eat more raw beef, brothers and sisters. If it is possible to feel high on food. I did. It was better than any expensive wine or ultra dark chocolate I've ever had. I may have to indulge in this a couple times a month.

I feel fantastic. I loved this meal. I am soaring with the eagles, images of Eurasian horsemen in my head.

Oz, it is said, dropped out of college suddenly after being called back home by family to his mysterious fatherland. I hope Oz (my mental image of the great Tatars) and I still have some kind of strange kinship. Life is funny. Maybe we will cross paths again. I'll gladly put together some Steak Tartare for my old friend...see if it resonates for him as it did for me....

Stopping by (a wood-paneled room) On a Snowy Evening

It's snowing in Cleveland. I LOVE IT.

I hardly ski anymore these days, I am somewhat naturally cold and need far more layers than most people to maintain a comfortable body temperature, shoveling hurts my back, and I start to wilt when we've gone months without sunshine (and we DO go months without sunshine in Cleveland.)

But I love winter for all of the fabulous moments indoors with good food and drink.

The first year the Great Lakes Brewing Co. opened, a date took me there in a blinding blizzard. We were the only patrons out on such a dreadful night. Perhaps as a thank you for our bravery or foolhardiness, the bartender gave us an extended and fascinating history of the location and one Elliot Ness (a one-time resident of that Cleveland neighborhood). It was like a private history lesson in the warm room with glowing brass kettles and gleaming bartops.

I think of all the wonderful Christmases, a night when most restaurants are closed, when I have gone to Nighttown (a veritable Cleveland Heights institution) for a sample of their warm bread pudding to round out a cold Christmas night. I think about the warm spoonfuls of that delightful confection while enjoying the view outside the front windows of the normally traffic-logged Cedar Road hill, now looking like a Currier and Ives picture in all of its snowy quietude.

I think about adult sledding expeditions, laughing at how utterly ridiculous it must look for grown folks to be giggling their way down some steep decline, never properly dressed for the occasion. I think about the divine smell of Beef Bourguignon, or Cassoulet, or Osso Buco filling the house on a snowy afternoon.

Last night I had the pleasure of reuniting with a friend who has lived away from Cleveland for many years. We met up in some cozy paneled room downtown where the music is too loud. Someone brought chocolate cookies to share. As we laughed the night away, sometimes the front door would stick open and you'd feel the cold wind whipping in from off of Lake Erie. I kept my stocking cap on the whole night. And to misquote Robert Frost..."and that made all the difference."