Category Archives: Food

Food, Security

Blueberry Pie

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Yes, it’s true. Blueberry season is here and that means PIE. Here is what has worked best for me:

Crust Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 sticks of unsalted frozen butter cut to 1/2 inch cubes
Pinch salt
Pinch sugar
4 to 8 Spoonfuls of ice water

Why make a crust? To be honest I went to a local store and looked for the pre-made variety. No luck. I asked and was told “it’s not in season”. Thank you not-very-much. Crust not in season? What is crust season? Blueberries everywhere and it’s not the season for pie crust?

So, without further hesitation:

Cut the stick frozen butter into 1/2-inch cubes. I suppose you could also just grate the butter. Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

I chose to use a fork for the mixing, but that’s not recommended unless you really feel like you can crush butter into the mix by hand. The end result should be something that looks like a coarse meal with bean-sized pieces of butter.

Then add water 1 spoonful at a time, mixing until it all starts to clump. Pinch the dough and see if it holds together to test if it’s ready. If it still crumbles, add water.

Pull the dough out and separate into two disks, sprinkle them with flour on all sides, wrap in plastic and chill for in the fridge for an hour or more. Do not knead or roll yet. The butter bits should still be visible.

At this point you are almost ready to make pie.

Pull one dough disc from the fridge and put on a floured surface. Let it thaw for five or ten minutes. Give it a sprinkle of flour on top. Roll it out to a 12 inch circle and about 1/8 inch thick. Add flour to the surfaces if the dough starts to stick. Test with a spatula.

When you have the 12 inch discs ready, fold one in half then place into a 9 inch pie plate and put it in the fridge for about half and hour.

The other one goes on top, unless you are really hungry, don’t mind starting again and like to eat pie dough.

Now for the filling:

8 cups of blueberries (about 24 oz)
Spoonful of lemon juice
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of cinnamon
Two tablespoons of unsalted butter
One egg
Spoonful of milk

Eat two cups of blueberries. Seriously, this helps. Then mix the remaining six cups of blueberries in a bowl with the sugar, flour, cinnamon, lemon juice. Once mixed thoroughly so all the berries are covered, pour into the chilled pie crust. See what I mean about the first two cups? No temptation to just eat the whole thing on the spot.

Sprinkle the top with pieces of butter.

Pull the other dough disc from the fridge and put on a floured surface. Let it thaw for five or ten minutes. Give it a sprinkle of flour on top. Roll it out to a 12 inch circle and about 1/8 inch thick. Add flour to the surfaces if the dough starts to stick. Test with a spatula.

Place on top of the berry filled crust. Tuck the top crust under the edge of the bottom crust. Press down with a fork to seal them together. Put the whole thing in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Whisk together the egg and milk. Pull the pie out and brush the top with the egg and milk.

Cut a big X or several slits in the crust to let steam escape when baking. Place on the middle rack in the oven.

Bake for 20 minutes at 425, then 30 to 40 minutes at 350 until the juice is bubbling and thick.

Try to let it cool before serving, unless you like eating hot blueberry soup in a crust.

Serves one, maybe two.

What does this have to do with security? Did you eat the two cups of blueberries as I suggested? That’s a preventive measure. It helps ensure the pie will be completed. The blue stuff all over your hands and lips normally would be a detective measure, but by eating the two cups you have defeated the control mechanism. A much more serious look at security can be found in the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service guide to Blueberries: Organic Production.

Food, Security

Potato Salad

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Several people have asked for the secret to the No-Mayo Potato Salad of late, so here it is with all its approximations:

A couple pounds of potatoes
About two spoonfuls of chopped dill
Four ounces of wine (red, white, whatever)
A spoonful of wine or rice vinegar
Eight tablespoons of olive oil
A spoonful of Dijon mustard
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
Pinch of thyme
Diced garlic or rings or onion or both
Three hard boiled eggs, sliced thinly

Fill a big pot with warm water and two spoonfuls of salt. Add potatoes and eggs and bring to a boil. Cook eggs another eight minutes, then remove and slice. Keep cooking potatoes until tender enough to cut, then drain the pot and fill with cold water.

Mix the wine, mustard, dill, vinegar, salt, pepper and thyme. Slowly whisk in the olive oil. Slice the potatoes and add them to the mix. Then add the sliced egg and onion/garlic.

The big difference from more common versions with mayonnaise is that these egg yolks are cooked thoroughly before they are mixed with oil. Most interesting, perhaps, is that even with mayonnaise the right amount of vinegar will push the pH high enough to be acidic and prevent harmful bacteria from forming. But I still like to say a picnic without mayo is safer. My recipe also avoids the danger of running afoul with European Federation of the Condiment Sauce Industries rules, which state that a sauce maintain at least 70% oil and 5% liquid egg yolk. As far as I can tell a boiled egg recipe has no such restraint.

Food, History, Security

Secrets of Sriracha

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The NYT gives an in-depth look into the Hot Stuff in a Squeeze Bottle

“I knew, after the Vietnamese resettled here, that they would want their hot sauce for their pho,” a beef broth and noodle soup that is a de facto national dish of Vietnam. “But I wanted something that I could sell to more than just the Vietnamese,” he continued.

“After I came to America, after I came to Los Angeles, I remember seeing Heinz 57 ketchup and thinking: ‘The 1984 Olympics are coming. How about I come up with a Tran 84, something I can sell to everyone?’ ”

What Mr. Tran developed in Los Angeles in the early 1980s was his own take on a traditional Asian chili sauce. In Sriracha, a town in Chonburi Province, Thailand, where homemade chili pastes are favored, natives do not recognize Mr. Tran’s purée as their own.

It’s described as a melting-pot of ingredients for America’s diverse tastes. One thing is for certain, Americans love sauce. The most interesting part of the story is how the family migrated from Vietnam.

To limit potential losses, Mr. Tran split the family into four groups: One group went to Indonesia, another to Hong Kong. A third went to Malaysia, and a fourth to the Philippines.

David Tran traveled on a freighter, the Huy Fong. Everyone ended up in United Nations refugee camps, before the family finally began to regroup.

“I was in Boston,” Mr. Tran recalled. “My brother-in-law was in Los Angeles. When we talked on the phone, I asked him, ‘Do they have red peppers in Los Angeles?’ He said yes. And we left.”

That was the start to a US operation that now generates 10 million bottles a year (2 million go into the non-Asian market) and is found across the country in chain restaurants. The plan today to limit potential losses is a completely different story.

Energy, Food, Security

Degrading Plastic

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A story from last year’s TheRecord.com explains that plastic can now be degraded by natural microbes at an impressive rate. The solution? A high school student figured out he should isolate the most productive strains by testing them on plastic bags.

He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic — not an easy task because they don’t exist in high numbers in nature.

First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.

After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.

Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 per cent less.

That wasn’t good enough for Burd. To identify the bacteria in his culture, he let them grow on agar plates and found he had four types of microbes. He tested those on more plastic strips and found only the second was capable of significant plastic degradation.

Next, Burd tried mixing his most effective strain with the others. He found strains one and two together produced a 32 per cent weight loss in his plastic strips. His theory is strain one helps strain two reproduce.

The risk of plastic now has to be recalculated.