Serves 6
¾ pound dried cannellini beans
1 ½ pounds large shrimp, shelled and de-veined
1/3 cup white wine
5 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons roasted garlic, smashed
Salt
Crushed Red Pepper
1 fennel bulb, fennel fronds reserved
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup minced sage leaves
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Dash of hot sauce

In a bowl, cover the beans with cold water and soak for at least 4 hours or overnight.
Drain the beans. In a large pot, cover them with cold water. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Tightly cover the pot, lower the heat and cook the beans, stirring occasionally, until just tender, about 30 minutes. (Bean cooking time can vary widely. Add additional boiling water and continue to cook until beans are tender if necessary). Remove from the heat and cool the beans in the water to room temperature. Drain well and transfer to a large bowl.
In a shallow dish, stir together the shrimp, wine, 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, 1 tablespoon of the roasted garlic, the crushed red pepper, and a pinch of salt.
Cover and let stand at room temperature, stirring occasionally for 1 hour.
Preheat a grill pan or BBQ. Quarter the fennel bulb vertically. Brush the fennel on all sides with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Remove the shrimp from their marinade, reserving the marinade, and slide them onto 4 or 5 flat metal skewers. Lay the skewered shrimp and fennel quarters on the grill. Grill, turning the shrimp once and basting them often with the marinade, and turning the fennel 3 or 4 times, about 8 minutes total.
Core the fennel quarters. Cut the fennel into 1 inch pieces. Slide the shrimp from the skewers. Mince the fennel fronds. There should be about 3 tablespoons. Add the shrimp and fennel and fennel fronds to the bowl with the beans.
In a food processor or blender, combine the extra virgin olive oil, sage, 2 tablespoons garlic puree, vinegar, hot sauce, and a pinch of salt. Process until thick and fairly smooth. Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss well.

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Greening Your Kitchen
As terms like grass-fed, organic, locally grown, and sustainable become household words, eco-conscious cooks and manufacturers focus on the next frontier. After you get your pasture-raised chicken home, what are you cooking it in? After dinner, how are you packaging your leftovers?

Nonstick cookware, long considered one of the great culinary advancements of the 20^th century, has some major drawbacks. Last month, a study was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine linking chemicals in nonstick pans to high cholesterol in children. This is in addition to multiple studies which have shown that at high temperatures, Teflon, the chemical used in the original nonstick pans, can be lethal to animals and cause flu-like symptoms in humans. How hot the pan needs to be to cause illness is still up for debate.

Aluminum pots and pans have been all but phased out of most home kitchens, since studies show they may be linked with Alzheimer’s disease. Yet every single chef and restaurant owner I spoke to in researching this article still used them in their restaurant.

How you store your food has been called into question as well. A 2008 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association showed a connection between Bisphenol A and health risks such as heart disease, cancer, obesity, neurological disorders, early puberty in females, and diabetes. Bisphenol A is commonly known BPA, and is a chemical found in plastics that are used most notably for food storage containers and baby bottles. A joint study conducted by 38 experts concluded that the levels of BPA found in the average person are higher than those that cause harm to animals in lab experiments. For two years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration disputed the validity of these reports and insisted that BPA in plastic was safe for everyday use. However a few months ago, the FDA made a complete reversal and released a statement with a new message;
“On the basis of results from recent studies using novel approaches to test for subtle effects, both the National Toxicology Program and FDA have some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children. The FDA is taking reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the food supply. These steps include: supporting the industry’s actions to stop producing BPA-containing baby bottles and infant feeding cups for the U.S. market; facilitating the development of alternatives to BPA for the linings of infant formula cans; and supporting efforts to replace BPA or minimize BPA levels in other food can linings.”

So now we know that we should avoid plastic that contains BPA, but what about all of the other chemicals in the plastics we use on a daily basis. On the bottom of most plastic bottles and containers is a number- from 1 to 7- a recycling code which helps guide you, if you know what the numbers mean. Here’s a simple guide:

Plastic #1: Commonly found in soda bottles, cooking oil bottles, and peanut butter containers. This type of plastic is safe if used just once, however it should never be rinsed out and used a second time.
Plastic #2: Commonly found in milk containers and whipped butter tubs. This type of plastic has no known health hazards.
Plastic #3: Polyvinyl chloride often referred to as PVC. This is one of the more dangerous forms of plastic because it contains chlorine, which releases toxins when it gets too warm.  
Plastic #4: Commonly found in food storage containers and grocery bags. This type of plastic has no known health hazards.
Plastic #5: Commonly found in baby bottles, bottle caps, and straws. Early studies show that it is safer for cold liquids than for hot, as high temperatures may cause chemicals in the plastic to leech into food or beverages.
Plastic #6: Commonly known as Styrofoam. It has been proven that this type of plastic is not a food-safe product. It can cause eye, respiratory, and skin irritation, kidney disorders, and depression. For many years it was used to create egg cartons, disposable plates, and take out containers. We now know that it can leech toxins into your food and should be avoided.
Plastic #7: Contains the controversial chemical, BPA, and should be avoided. It had been used for decades to make food storage containers, plastic silverware, plastic “sippy” cups, and baby bottles and its use has not been completely phased out yet by manufacturers.


So what should you be using to cook and store your food in?

At home, as opposed to in their restaurants because of economic factors, many eco-conscious local chefs are replacing their old cookware with new “greener” products. There are several new brands of pots and pans on the market which offer a similar nonstick surface while guaranteeing that they do not use harmful chemicals in their products. After testing several of these new cookware lines, I found that the Starfrit line sold at Wal-Mart was hands down my favorite and all of the chefs I spoke to who had tried it agreed. It is made of sustainable, non-toxic materials, and has every feature that traditional nonstick has.

When shopping for cookware at garage sales as many of us do, stick with the materials that have been used for centuries; cast iron (which actually has health benefits), enameled cast iron, stainless steel, and copper (which reduces your carbon footprint by shortening cooking times).


As for food storage, the easy answer is to avoid plastics altogether and go with glass. It has its downside, such as being heavier to carry and more likely to break, but I find that the peace of mind it gives me is worth the hassle.

Cooking should be fun, and we shouldn’t have to be experts in environmental engineering to put a healthy meal on the table. If you want to keep it simple, use the materials your grandparents used, use plastic in moderation, and don’t forget to eat your vegetables.
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 Curry Chicken Sandwich; an easy weeknight dinner 
A big satisfying sandwich can make a great weeknight dinner. For this recipe, the chicken can be prepared the night before and dinner can be on the table in 10 minutes. I usually serve this with some homemade potato chips, or a green salad with sliced apples.

CURRY CHICKEN SANDWICH

 

Serves 4

 

3 ½ cups of chicken that has been grilled or roasted, and cut up into bite-sized cubes

8 slices of pancetta

2 tablespoons curry powder

1 tablespoon powdered ginger

2 teaspoons powdered cumin

1 cup mayonnaise

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

The juice of one lime  

A dozen red grapes, cut in half

Half of a head of radicchio, thinly sliced

2 ripe avocados, peeled and cut up into bite-sized cubes (same size as the chicken)

8 thin slices red onion

8 slices of peasant or country-style bread (I like to cut off the crusts but this is optional)

 

Set aside the cooked, cut-up chicken in a bowl.

In a skillet over medium heat, fry the pancetta just a minute or so on each side so that it gets nice and crispy. Set it aside to drain on paper towels.

 

Combine in a bowl the mayonnaise, spices, and lime juice. Add the chicken. Stir well. Add the grapes, radicchio, and avocado. Taste for seasoning.

 

Place 2 slices of pancetta on each sandwich, top with 2 slices of red onion, and then the curry chicken. Serve immediately.

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BLACK MARKET MILK

It used to be that if the feds showed up with weapons drawn and raided a storefront, you could assume it was for selling drugs or guns. Not so any more. With increasing regularity all across the country, the hottest illegal commodity is raw, as in unhomogenized and unpasteurized, milk. Here in the Hudson Valley, legal raw milk is readily available.

This summer alone, there have been over a dozen high-drama raids at farms, grocery stores and private homes. One of the most dramatic took place in June at Rawesome Foods, a private food club in Venice, California. Federal officers, with guns pointed at workers, disabled the club’s security cameras then headed straight to the refrigerated cases and confiscated containers of raw milk, yogurt and cheese in a manner reminiscent of cops shutting down a meth lab. “There’s a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they’re raiding us because we’re selling dairy products?” Rawesome Foods volunteer Sea Jones told the Los Angeles Times.

According to the Weston Price Foundation, an agency whose goal is to spread information about healthy eating and nutrition through education and activism, close to a million Americans consume raw milk and the number is growing exponentially every year. Selling raw milk is legal in 39 states, but getting a license is a long, expensive process, and demand is exceeding supply, leading some to create underground dairy operations. Food clubs like Rawesome skirt the license issue by being a members-only club not technically engaged in commerce with the public.

If you haven’t been following the raw milk debate, it goes something like this: prior to the late 1800s, all milk was raw, meaning straight from the cow without any homogenization or pasteurization. In the 1860s French Chemist Louis Pasteur, in his desire to preserve the life of his beverage of choice, cold beer, stumbled upon pasteurization. Pasteurization is essentially heating something to a high enough temperature to kill all bacteria, and then cooling it immediately. The result is a longer shelf-life and a more uniform product. This process was quickly adopted by the dairy industry to preserve eminently perishable dairy products and make them more readily available to the post-industrial population that was spreading out into cities and away from family farms.

Some now argue that because of government regulation on farms and improved knowledge of how disease spreads, dairy pasteurization is no longer necessary. In fact, those in the pro-raw movement (many of whom prefer that we use the term “real” milk as opposed to “raw” milk) believe that pasteurized milk is actually bad for you, robbing your body of much-needed nutrients and “good” bacteria, or probiotics.

If you’ve never tasted raw milk, it’s reminiscent of melted ice cream — thicker, creamier and sweeter than the pasteurized milk most of us are used to. Perry Bosque, a Hudson Valley resident and raw milk enthusiast says, “I think it tastes like vanilla ice cream, but not as sweet. In the spring it’s very green tasting. You can almost taste the grass in it.”

Often we don’t think of dairy as a seasonal food but indeed it is. In the Northeast, early spring is the best time to give it a try. Grass-fed cows produce the best milk when the grass is green and lush in spring.

In New York State, 27 farms currently have a license to sell raw milk. One of the most popular distributors, F&C Brooks Farm, on Tongore Road in Kingston, sells its fresh milk between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. daily to a growing group of consumers. A half gallon can be purchased for $4 ($5 if you forgot to bring your own glass jar). And while you’re at the farm you’re encouraged to visit with the cows and chickens and chat with members of the Brooks family. They’re happy to answer your questions and address any concerns you may have about their product, and sometimes you can even watch them bottle your milk straight from the cow while you wait.

Nina Planck, author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why, spoke to The New York Times about her own raw milk consumption: “We drink raw milk because we trust the traditional food chain more than the industrial one.” Advocates, including Planck, allege that raw milk can actually solve a whole host of health problems, from allergies and eczema to ADHD. It is especially appealing to those who believed themselves to be lactose intolerant. In 85 percent of cases, people with intolerance to pasteurized dairy products can drink raw milk without any symptoms. This is because raw milk still contains lactase, one of the enzymes which aid the body in digesting the sugars found in milk.

The Food and Drug Administration contends that pasteurization is still a much needed process to protect us from food borne illness that could be harbored in dairy products. They cite just under 300 cases of raw milk-induced illness last year as proof. Potentially dangerous pathogens in raw milk include salmonella, E. coli and listeria, all of which originate in cow manure. The Center for Disease Control says that raw milk is “produced in environments that are unavoidably contaminated with fecal material.” It states that these bacteria become infinitely more dangerous (even deadly) if the consumer has a compromised immune system to begin with.

But is the pro-pasteurization stance of the FDA and other government agencies part of a larger Big Dairy conspiracy? Some members of the raw milk movement are convinced that the government’s campaign against raw dairy has more to do with the bottom line than protecting our health. David Gumpert, in his book, The Raw Milk Revolution, states, “It’s not about safety — it’s about protecting markets. Conventional dairy doesn’t want raw milk tarnishing the image of pasteurized milk…Look at hamburger meat, spinach, peanut butter. There’s no talk of banning these foods, even though they’ve been huge public health hazards.”

Raw milk production will probably never work on a large scale. Its short shelf-life (seven to 14 days) and instability make it difficult to transport to urban areas. However, for those of us who live in farm country, we may have a big decision to make before our next bowl of cereal. ++

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Flavor Hook-Ups

Some people get along famously and would make ideal next door neighbors. Others would be better off separated by a few streets (or towns). Food is the same way. Companion Planting is the practice of using plants that “get along well” to help each other grow. And those plants often taste great together too…Mother Nature’s way of flavor matchmaking.

 

You may have heard the expression, “what grows together, goes together”. When you’re trying to create a meal, this is a great starting point. Things that grow in the same region, at the same time of year, very often compliment each other. Tomatoes and basil, carrots and peas, apples and squash, cucumber and dill, corn and beans…there are so many classic combinations.

 

Tomatoes and asparagus are a great example of Companion Planting. Tomato plants keep the common asparagus beetles away, and asparagus plants emit a chemical which destroys the roundworm, an enemy of the tomato plant. In late summer, when tomatoes are at their peak, I like to make this tomato-asparagus frittata for a few friends on a Sunday morning…..

 

TOMATO-ASPARAGUS FRITTATA

Serves 4

 

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

8 eggs

4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 vine-ripened tomatoes, chopped

1 bunch of green asparagus, cut into bite-size pieces

1 ½ cups Swiss cheese, grated

Chives, garnish

 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil and sauté asparagus about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Cook 2 minutes more.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk or cream. Be sure to lift your whisk out of the bowl a little as you go. This whips some air into the eggs and keeps the frittata light and fluffy. Spoon the asparagus and tomatoes from the skillet into the bowl with the eggs. Keep the same skillet over a medium flame and add the butter. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet, and stir well. Season again with a dash of salt and black pepper. Stir in the Swiss cheese and cook for 5 minutes over a medium-low flame, stirring occasionally. Then put the skillet in the oven to cook for about 10 minutes, until the top is golden-brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of the frittata comes out clean.

Slide your knife around the whole pan to loosen the edges of the frittata, then carefully transfer it onto a platter, or serve it directly from the skillet. Garnish with chopped fresh chives.

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RAW CORN CHOWDER

As many of you surely know, the St. Mark’s Farmers Market is one of the gems of the East Village. Each Tuesday from 8 am- 7 pm, a dozen or more local farmers set up delectable tables piled high with their seasonal bounty; Seafood, eggs, fresh pasta, organic produce, vibrant flowers, ripe fruit, and home-baked goods. It’s enough to keep you out of the Supermarket for most of the week.

Recently I stopped at the Troncillito Farm table and bought a few ears of corn that were as sweet as candy. Troncillito is a third generation fruit farm in Marlboro, New York. Up until 1990 they produced only apples, but they’ve since expanded to include plums, peaches, corn, cabbage, tomatoes, and green beans.

So back to my corn, it was so fresh and flavorful in its raw state that I could not bare to subject it to the harsh fate of an open flame or the high temperatures inside my oven….I decided to make a raw corn chowder. It was so simple and really celebrated the natural flavors of the corn....you have a few weeks left in corn season to try it out!

RAW CORN CHOWDER

Serves 2 people

5 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 clove of garlic, finely minced

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 cups of water

1 avocado, diced 

2 tablespoons cilantro, finely minced

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Chopped chives for garnish

Combine the corn with the olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, and 1 cup of water in a blender (you may need to do this in batches depending on the size of your blender). Add more water as desired to make it more or less thick. Taste the soup for seasoning. Pour into individual soup bowls and garnish with the avocado, cilantro, and a dash of cayenne pepper.

This soup is best made just before serving.