Category Archives: Food

What do good knives have to do with good health?


It may seem that knives have absolutely nothing to do with health, yet good kitchen knives are the first kitchen tool in which I encourage clients to invest if they haven’t done so already. For less than $300, a home cook can get the essential knives needed for daily meal preparation and over time, can probably save more than that in headache remedies for the pain and suffering caused by dull knives! (If you’re wondering what the second purchase I recommend is, it’s a good cutting board, of course!)

My premise is that most healthful meals involve SOME sort of trimming, chopping, dicing, and slicing and if you are attempting this with dull or cheap knives, there are numerous challenges. Upgrading to a decent set of knives has a host of benefits, but here are my Top 3.

1) Speed
Good, sharp knives are faster. Plain and simple. Slicing a tomato with a dull, low quality knife is an exercise in Zen-like patience as you saw back and forth hoping to eventually break through the tomato skin (Seriously? HOPE to break through? We’re talking about a TOMATO SKIN here and I’ve had this experience more than once when cutting a tomato with a sub-par knife! Sheesh.) If you’ve never used quality knives, you will be AMAZED by how much more quickly you are able to complete the preparation for any recipe.

2) Results
Quality knives just do a better job at cutting! They cause less (aesthetic) damage to the food when it’s being prepared, leaving you with more beautiful slices or dices on the plate. And when you’re dealing with healthy food, presentation matters even more. Since they don’t mangle the tomato or bread or whatever it is you are trying to cut, there is also less waste.

3) Safety
Paradoxically, you are actually LESS likely to cut yourself with a SHARP knife than with a DULL one! And since good knives are often sold in knife blocks, you’ll keep your fingers (and any little fingers that roam your kitchen drawers) from being accidentally cut when digging for a knife.

So you’re ready to buy? There are really three basic knives that should be in your collection.

Once you get comfortable with what these three can do, you can go crazy adding many more specialized tools to your knife block, but these three could easily last most home cooks a lifetime. Here’s a bit about when to pull out each one.

A 7-10″ Chef’s Knife – this is your basic kitchen workhorse. It makes me crazy when I see someone using a teensy paring knife to chop a potato or carrot or celery into her hand! A cutting board and a chef’s knife make quick work of most chopping and dicing. This knife will also slice meat (ham, turkey, beef, etc) beautifully.

A 3-4″ Paring Knife – This is your “precision” knife – great for peeling vegetables or fruits but also for deboning meats.

A Serrated bread knife – You need to use a sawing motion when using a serrated knife vs just pushing the knife straight through the food to be cut. The serrated edge thereby slices bread without mangling it, but it’s also super for tomatoes which can tend to crush under the weight of a less-than-perfectly-sharp chef’s knife.

Which brings me to one important disclaimer:
A good knife only stays good if it stays sharp! Once you’ve invested in knives, you must commit the time to keeping them sharp. Even the very best quality knife will dull over time with use. Did you know professional chefs sharpen their knives every DAY? You can do this at home by using a honing steel to prevent or delay dulling by honing before each use, but a steel will not make a dull knife sharp again! As a result, you should also buy a good quality knife sharpener OR have your knives professionally sharpened periodically (once or twice a year). Trust me, you will notice and appreciate the difference when you do!

There are countless brands of quality knives out there. I swear by Wusthof because I grew up with them and have owned them personally for the last 15 years. J.A. Henckels is an other excellent brand and I often hear good things about Japanese brands like Shun and Global as well. The most important thing is to go to a store and actually HOLD the knife before buying. You’ll want one that feels right in your hand. Not too big or too small, too heavy or too light. You’ll know it when you find it. And then you’re off and chopping!


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Onions and Shallots and Leeks…oh my!


Alliums. I’m not sure I even knew what that word meant until I learned one of my clients had an allergy to everything in the allium family. Since I’d have to get creative to develop recipes without alliums, I figured I’d better learn exactly what they were!

It turns out that alliums are the botanical name for the members of the onion family which includes onions, leeks, shallots, garlic, chives, scallions and apparently about 700 other species. After I finished lamenting the flavor we’d be sacrificing by NOT including these in the meals my client and I would concoct, I started to think about exactly why I was so attached to all-things-onion. So here goes…an ode to alliums.


Top 5 things I love about alliums:
1 – They are the best aromatic in the gastronomic world.
2 – They add substance and flavor without adding fat or (significant) calories.
3 – They add depth to dishes and can be used choicefully to evoke flavor nuances.
4 – They can be used raw OR cooked and taste completely different each way.
5 – They have a long shelf life and are easy to keep on hand.

Here’s a closer look at the merits of each of these popular members of the allium family…

Onions
As both a vegetable AND a flavoring agent, this is the staple allium in most kitchens. Fresh, these are delicate enough to be sliced onto a sandwich or burger. Storage onions (the kind with papery skins you see in grocery stores in bulk or net bags) have a somewhat stronger flavor but a really long shelf life when properly stored. They form the basis for many savory dishes like soups, stews, casseroles, and stir frys. Onions have a heavier, earthier flavor profile than their counterparts which follow, less of a bitey fresh taste, so they don’t lend themselves AS well to fresh dishes. Of the storage varieties, yellow onions are the most pungent, followed by white, spanish, bermuda, red, pearl and vidalia. When I think about how I’d use these

Yellow – basic all purpose onion
White – often used in Mexican cooking
Spanish or Bermuda – great in creamy soups and sauces because of texture
Red – beautiful color and mild flavor so good raw in salads or sliced on burgers or sandwiches
Pearl – good for pickling (due to size) or added whole to stews (cooks quickly)
Vidalia – very juicy and much sweeter than others – good both raw and cooked (*this is MY go-to variety)

Scallions (aka Green Onions)
Generally eaten raw in salads, these can also be cooked and often are used in Asian stir frys or Mexican dishes as a garnish. They have a mild, delicate flavor in both raw and cooked dishes and can be used when onion would be overpowering.

Garlic
This is by far the most pungent member of the onion family but the flavor mellows considerably when cooked vs. eaten raw. A slow-cooked dish with garlic (or even a whole head of garlic roasted unpeeled and then squeezed out and spread on bread) can be much sweeter and less “garlicky” than anything made with raw garlic. The fresher the garlic is (i.e. harvested in the spring when in season), the subtler the flavor is. Garlic is an essential flavoring in nearly all ethnic cuisines.

Shallots
Shallots are intense in flavor but without being overly pungent. I describe the flavor as “bitey” or “bracing” and love to use diced fresh shallots in salads or homemade salad dressings or in compound butter. When sauteed, shallot flavor mellows considerably. I like to saute them with mushrooms in a little olive oil and butter and toss with steamed green beans or other green vegetables. I love the complexity they add to sauces when sauteed. I also use them in the base for many of my pasta sauces and risottos as they pair beautifully with white wine.

Leeks
Leeks are far more delicate in taste than onions and make a more gentle flavoring for soups. They are famously paired with potato in potato-leek soup but are also quite delicious as a vegetable on their own…simmered in butter especially!

Chives
While technically an allium, chives are most often used as an herb. They have a fine, delicate flavor that pairs well with eggs (in an omelet especially) or potatoes (on top of baked potato or mixed into mashed potatoes or in potato salad!). They make a beautiful fresh garnish for pureed soups or cooked vegetables.

So there you have it…an ode to alliums! As for the client with the allergy? We’re working on ways to amp up flavor WITHOUT these precious gems…I’ll keep you posted on our experiments!

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Buying Organic on a Budget


I’m often asked questions by clients about how affordable it really is to eat healthfully, or more specifically to eat organically. Oprah recently had Michael Pollan (author of Food Rules , In Defense of Food, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma and contributor to the movie Food Inc.) on her show. And today, her website posted this article by an Oprah.com writer who attempted to follow the movie’s guidance AND stick to her budget.


I thought I’d share it with you, as it makes the case that while there are financial tradeoffs involved, they are not insurmountable, and can be readily overcome through cost savings in other budget areas. Beyond that, they are WORTH it, and we need to start thinking about finding the best quality as our objective when buying food as opposed to finding the lowest cost.

From a personal perspective, when my family converted to organic milk, I was a little worried about DOUBLING the cost of milk with two preschool-age milk-drinkers in the house. In truth the extra six or seven dollars a week for the two gallons they drink was easily recouped by cutting back on other things (like brewing my own coffee vs buying it from a coffee shop or taking a lunch vs. buying it at work one day a week). Once I’d convinced myself of the value of organic milk, these were pretty easy ideas to generate!

Organic meats took us a bit longer to try and I’m not 100% converted yet but I do now buy organic MOST of the time. Organic meat is definitely more expensive, so it’s helped us to view meat as something we need less of overall…and to really savor what we do buy.

That’s the whole game as far as I’m concerned…quality over quantity….excellence over frequency. It’s a process to change the way we’ve been taught to think about food (which I would paraphrase as “get as much of it as you can, as cheaply as possible”) but it’s nice to see other writers helping to explain that the effort is one worth undertaking.


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