The Delights Of Salmon

Here the scoop not only is salmon good for you,it's also one of the most flavorful meats.It's also the most versatile.You can grill it,bake it or broil it.Even canned salmon is versatile and a healthy meal choice.It too can be turned into a variety of different salads and even dips.Because it's light, it's the perfect meat for these warm late Spring days. Salmon has a tremendous amount of benefits.One is that it is chocked with an unusually high amount of Omega 3 proteins, in fact more than any other fish. The protein is excellent for lowering cholesterol as well as strengthening cells.It can also help the body fight off such cancers as colon, breast and prostrate.It even decreases the risk of bolo related cancers such as Hodkins lymphoma.Incorporating salmon into your daily diet can also make you happier.Studies have shown that people who have a salmon rich diet do not suffer from depression along with having a decreased risk of hostility.It's also good for joints, reinforcing cartilage.Another benefit is that eating the fish two times a week can significantly cut down on the onset of macular degeneration ,a condition in which the retinas dry up. Salmon is also a flavorful fish on it's own. Unlike tuna, which has the best flavor when it's packed in oil, salmons,strong, almost earthy flavor stands up. However it works wells with such a variety of herbs,spices and sauces, more so than any other fish. There are several different types to choose from.The first choice is wild or farmed?Which is the better and healthier choice? Many chefs and nutritionists will tell you to buy wild.Farmed salmon is no different than chicken , beef or pork that have been raised in pens.They can get lice from each other, thanks to rampant over crowding and then treated with antibiotics which humans can later ingest.Salmon farmers and Congress are in talks about improving conditions, making the penned area more in the free range tradition. There are also different types.King or Chinook salmon have a rich flavor and firm flesh.This is excellent smoked but can be cooked another way as well.For more flavor and color consider there'd or sockeye kind,This makes the best sushi,because of these two attributes and works well with other strong flavors ,Coho or silver salmons the most used, especially in restaurants.It's a light orange in hue and has a mild flavor.It's basically what 's in cans and works great in light dishes such as salads.There is also the pink or bumpy and dog.The pink is an excellent source of protein yet it and chum or dog are ignored or dismissed by salmon snobs?The last is prized in Europe and is versatile in a number of dishes. If you want a dish that is both healthy and flavorful, consider salmon. it is perfect in a salad of summer vegetables or grilled with lemon. not only thAt but you'll be delivering a healthy dose of benefits to every part of your body. Enjoy salmon in any form,It really is a true treat.

The Healthiest Time To Eat

Warm weather brings a multitude of great things.Days that stretch well into the evening hours! Sunny afternoons spend on a sandy beach.Gardens rife with multicolored blooms.One of the best aspects is healthier eating.The summer brings about some of the best harvests of the year.Enjoy this the most because it's so beneficial. Warm ,sun filled days give us sweet ,wholesome berries.Start buying or go to the farms to pick them yourself.Strawberries and blueberries abound as do the first wave of raspberries( this last actually has two harvest seasons, one now and the second in September, early October)"Use these as sweeteners in cereals and oatmeal as well as in teas , and ades .They can be pulverized and turned into a syrup.You can add a bit of dark honey of you want them a bit more palatable.Later on in the season you can enjoy peaches and plums. Instead of relying on ice cream or frozen yogurt for cooling treat, think about one of them, chilled nicely in the fridge.Any fruit goes well in a salad and even adds another layer of texture and flavor. Another idea is making fresh fruit chutneys or salsas to be served with whole wheat tortilla chips. Just as the season brings about many fruits, it also showers us with veggies and tons of them.Tomatoes are the most planted and the most eaten.Nothing beats a fresh picked, sun warmed one dusted with the tiniest pinch of seasalt. Tomatoes are also versatile.They are great in a raw primavera sauce or just being a part of a kabob.Think about tomato pan bagna , a Provencale sandwich that features olive oil drenched tomatoes and sliced raw onion on a whole wheat baguette.The entire sandwich is Saran wrapped and compressed under heavy bricks so that the bread sops up the juices and oils.Green peppers are another warm weather must eat.These are good sliced raw or stuffed with lean beef and chopped mushrooms.As the season becomes summer , eggplant will be ready to be picked. Make the heart healthy and drool worthy dish ratatouille.This mélange of it along with onions and tomatoes is one of the tastiest summer dishes.It can be the centerpiece of any outdoor gathering or just a simple weekend supper. This is the season to start eating right.Take advantage of nature's bounty and change your diet.It's Mother Nature's way of gently pushing us to a better lifestyle.

A Rainbow Of Spices

Indian food is a variety of so many different colors and tastes.It reflects this mysterious, ancient country with it's exotics recipes and amazing ingredients.It is also a fun cuisine to cook,from it's" appetizers to desserts. There's a new cookbook put there showcasing these, and they are the perfect dishes to welcome in the summer. The cookbook is Spices And Seasons,Simple Sustainable Indian Flavors (Hippocrene Books,New York)written by Rinku Bhattacharya.This is her second book and she has written for newspapers and appeared on television.I love this book, not just because I love Indian food but because Ms. Bhattacharya also explains and show how to make your own arsenal of Indian spices.These are vital in creating the right flavor and can be made for a few pennies.Not only that she lists the health benefits of them as well. Another plus is that she uses farm fresh vegetables from the far den.With spices, such as turmeric and cardamon ,mixed with tomatoes, peppers and eggplants she creates dishes that are not only flavorful but also better than any tonic or medicine.These recipes are also the direct opposite of Indian take out which is usually sodden with cream and butter.Most of her recipes don't have these, opting for a tiny bit of ghee or clarified butter.Even the dessert recipes such as the Ginger and cardamon cookies and the frozen treat, raspberry mufti are far from being rich. The other recipes are drool worthy.This is not all curry, although there are recipes for it.There is also chutney ones and many focus on dal, the creamy lentil dish that's made a variety of ways.You could try lentils with cabbage or slow simmered for a tasty dinner.Ms. Bhattacharya includes some great recipes for these warm days.Tofu is put on skewers with tomatoes and onions.There's a long list of salads to choose from ,such as a black ,bean corn and stone fruit one and an essential Indian one that have cucumbers and tomatoes drenched in spices and dusted with crushed peanuts.Eggplants and potatoes are curried with tomatoes to create a light summer dinner.There recipes for winter too,fiery pilafs that contain chickpeas and mushrooms.Another is a chicken orzo spiced one ,fragrant with cinnamon, cardamon and saffron.A different kind of holiday dish is the Surprise The Guests Pink Chicken Biryani, chicken cooked with a tomato rich tika sauce. Breads are a must at an Indian table and there are several recipes to choose from naan to parathas.There's even a version of crostini which is perfect for dipping into the curries or dal's. Spices And Seasons, Simple , Sustainable Indian Flavors, is a great cookbook for any Indian food lover like myself. it also is a great book for a home chef wanting to try cooking of the Subcontinent too. The recipes are flavorful and healthy, a perfect combination for modern eating.

Waking Up Brunch

Sometimes brunch can be a sleepy affair.It's the same old omelets, French toast and eggs Benedict.Once in a while a delicate salad or quiche is thrown into spike it up a little.Yet it still remains the same - a sedate meal for both the mind and the palate.However it's time to give this weekend tradition a well deserved jolt. Melissa Clark got the chance to do this and garner some interesting recipes from some of Manhattan's best chefs.New York City is notorious for its brunches . In fact the town probably invented them but as with every meal ,dishes can become boring .Chefs stuck on the shift resentfully whip up the same over used recipes.Luckily that's all changing.Cooks are tapping into their creative vein and inventing new recipes that are sure to be favorites.The ingredients are all the same, eggs,bread, and sausages along with fruit but they're being reconstructed. Instead of a frittata, eggs are now being whipped into a silky terrine ,more like a savory bread pudding.The reasonably priced restaurant El Rey Coffee Bar and Luncheonette. Chef April Bloomfield will still serve a variety of egg dishes at her place, the Breslin. She gives brunch goers, eggs poached with curried lentils and and yogurt or fried with cotechino sausage and beans.There are even baked eggs, flavored with tomato and chorizo. These new dishes will bring in new diners too,looking for something different as well as keeping regulars happy.For most restaurants brunch is the most lucrative meal of the week.Many who can't afford the restaurants dinners will usually try the cheaper Sunday brunch menu.Brunch is also cost effective too.It has given rise to nose to tail cooking.Every part of the animal is used in these new recipes. At the famed Hearth restaurant, the chef serves a slab of pork blade steak, that works well with breakfast menu but not with a lunch or dinner one.Also fruits and vegetables never go to waste.Danny Amend of the Brooklyn hotspot Marco's reconfigured grapefruit slices as a savory salad,drizzled with olive oil and seasalt,served with chorizo sausages.The fruit would maybe be used as decoration otherwise and in this recipe, the entire fruit is being used.As for the booze that always accompanies brunch,that too has been reconfigured.The new star of the city cooking scene,Wylie Dufresne serves popcorn seasoned with Bloody Mary spices, such as Tabasco at his restaurant, Alders. Brunch is no longer a snooze affair in New York restaurants.New recipes are waking up brunch lovers. It's eggs and sausage but with a spark .

Nouvelle Jewish Cuisine

Can traditional dishes and ingredients be turned into haute cuisine?Yes,.and it's happening with the richly historical Jewish cuisine.Foods that great grandparents brought from Eastern Europe are now being reconstructed into artesenal dishes .They may be all fancied up but their core remains the same : homey ingredients being made into earthy, flavorful main meals and desserts. It was explored in today's New York Times Dining section.Dining regular ,Julia Moskin, wrote about this as she also visited some famous New York Jewish delis.Many young cooks are embracing schmaltz and liver ,turning them into hipsters must haves.Gefilte fish restaurants along with bagel shops ,are becoming on trend again. Yet these are not your great granddad's white fish and bagels.The fish is being made into chowder while the bagel makers are employing traditional baking methods to produce artesenal products.The results are delicious foods that embrace past centuries of Jewish cuisines.Smoked whitefish ,a staple in many homes ,is now being paired with creme fraiche and capers in a salad.Trout is also added to it ,to giving the variation of a chill. Salade Nicoise more oomph.Bagels are being and rolled and boiled before baking, giving us a crunchier, much more flavorful bagel.Onion ones have chopped onions as well as scallions put into the dough as opposed to having them sprinkled on the roll's surface. This renewed interest in Kosher cuisine is actually saving some dishes such as babka and borscht from extinction first.Babka, a sweet chocolate laced bread , is being reconfigured into bread pudding.A new generation is starting to appreciate it's, rich cocoa flavor and density.All beef hot-dogs and pastrami are also getting a revival as well.With this, comes a renewed interest in famed family owned eateries.The very well known Russ And Daughters is popular again .The restaurant is now owned by the fourth generation of the family.Where Joel Russ first had his pushcart of smoked herring, his great grandkids, John Russ Tepper and Niki Russ Federmanare running the deli he built there in 1904. Homemade soda, a hallmark of any Jewish restaurant, is remade into a ginger soda with hints of lemon and lime.Matzoh is roasted with butter and salt for a crackly yet creamy treat.Jewish bakeries are also cropping up again and with them comes sinful butter cookies and strudel,yeast raised coffee cakes and sour breads.Pumpernickel bread is being baked in the traditional method , first wrapped in a thin layer of dough before hitting the oven. The cuisine of the Eastern European Jews has always been a rich and flavorful one. Thanks to some clever modern twists it's also trendy too. Foods once long forgotten or simply ignored are finding their way back to tables. they represent both the past and future of Kosher cooking and baking.

Mommy 's Foods, Baby's Poisons

Who knew honey is pure poison to babies under one year? This writer didn't and I was shocked that food in some cases could be poisonous. We know about peanuts but there are some other surprises that are hard to swallow, literally.It seems one man's treat could be another's poison, deadlier than even hemlock. As far as honey , it is true poison to children less than a year old.It creates infant botulism , a type of stomach complaint that is different from the botulism adults get from canned food, namely mushrooms.This is when a baby swallows the spores that are within the sweetener.They then activate in the gut and produce botulinum toxin.The child loses muscle tone ,allowing with having a problem swallowing.Even when honey is used mixed with other ingredients, it is still not safe.Wait until your child is about eighteen months before introducing him or her to honey. Sadly enough dark corn syrup falls into this category too.Light corn syrup is fine however and can even be used as a laxative for constipated infants. Surprisingly there are several other foods that are also not baby friendly.Low fat or skim milk is one of them.While giving this to an older child is fine, feeding it to any of the diaper set is a taboo.Babies need as much fat as allowed.Whole milk provides this.It also has the nutrients need for bone and brain growth.Foods dangerous to a child's trachea are problem.Well meaning godparents and grandparents along with lackadaisical baby sitters may think it's cute or OK to give the little one pretzel nuggets or Crackerjack but these are dangerous. Even adults could choke on them.Sub in healthy treats like apple or pear slices or zwieback.Remember that soft sticky foods like marshmallows and gummy bears are also dangers too. Little ones could get these lodged in their throats too. Keep these well out of reach if you have them for your older kids. What works for Mommy may not work for baby. keep this in mind if you're expecting a little foodie to be or you're just babysitting.Those little bellies are developing. treat them with the utmost care.

Memorial Day Remember Our Troops

With Memorial Day today we think about soldiers and wars past.Unfortunately there are still conflicts and still soldiers and their families who need a good meal along with a good ear for listening. We have to honor them now while we can, whether through small or large gestures. If you know a service man or woman, invite them over while they're on leave or just returned from a tour of duty. Cook and bake their favorites. They'll appreciate both the food and the company.Offer to take a newly returned vet 's children for the night so that the vet and spouse can have a romantic dinner alone.Gift them with gift cards to their favorite restaurants. Some communities do have place for veterans of all ages to hang out. Volunteer at them by either cooking or even holding classes on nutrition. You could also ask your local VA hospital if you could help out and treat the elderly servicemen to fresh produce either from your yard or the local farmer's market. Hopefully this will be the century that will not see any more conflict.Right now though we should be focusing on our newly returned vets.Repay them with good nutritious food and a good solid support.