Sunday Dinner in Bowls

Dinner tonight was French Onion Soup and pan seared Alaskan halibut over curried black beans and corn.

February 6th, 2010 Snow Storm Dinner

Mother is still visiting and we have a 3-4 foot snow drift in front of the house so we stayed in and cooked.

I made pan seared lemon garlic chicken breasts, broccoli rabe sautéed in olive oil and tossed with roasted garlic puree and white balsamic, and oven roasted fingerlings – some Yukon golds, red bliss, and PEI purples.

Everyone seemed to like it.

via Doctor Forced Out for Disparaging Doughnuts – Well Blog – NYTimes.com.

Dr. Newsom regularly posted warnings on an electronic sign outside the health department. According to the news service, the sign messages included:

But it was a more direct attack on doughnuts that got him into trouble with local businesses after he ran the sign: “America Dies on Dunkin’.”

Student study unmasks sushi scandal in New York

A fourth of the fish for sale in New York City markets and sushi restaurants is mislabeled, a study launched by two high school students has found.

Cheap fish masquerading as fancy and endangered species disguised as eco-friendly have both been busted by the enterprising young scientists and a new technique called DNA bar coding, the New York Times said Friday.

Kate Stoeckle, 19, and Louisa Strauss, 18, collected 60 samples of seafood from four restaurants and ten stores in Manhattan, preserved them in alcohol and sent them to the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada for genetic analysis.

Stoeckle’s father Mark Stoeckle is an expert on birds and a proponent of DNA bar coding, a field developed since 2003, in which scientists use a single gene to identify a species rather than the entire genome, the daily said.

One evening, over dinner at a sushi restaurant, Stoeckle asked her father if the technique could be used on sushi, and a high school science project was born.

In Canada, Guelph graduate student Eugene Wong compared the DNA of the samples the young women sent him to a global library of 30,562 “bar codes” representing nearly 5,500 fish species, the Times said.

The DNA revealed that two of the four restaurants and six of the 10 grocery stores mislabelled their fish, the Times said.

Wong and biology professor Robert Hanner collected another 40 samples in Toronto and in Guelph.

“This not only raises concerns of consumer fraud, but also public health,” said Hanner, also associate director for the Canadian Barcode of Life Network, in a statement on the University of Guelph website.

“A person could have allergies to a certain species and if it’s mislabelled that could have dangerous consequences,” Hanner said.

Among the findings was Mozambique tilapia, a cheap fish that is usually farm-raised, sold as pricey white tuna. Flying fish roe actually came from the humble smelt, and seven out of nine fish labelled “red snapper” were not.

Atlantic Halibut, classified as endangered in the wild, was labelled and sold as Pacific Halibut, a species labelled a “best choice” for human consumption by environmentalists, the University of Guelph statement said.

“Consumers may think they are doing the right thing for the environment by buying a certain type of fish that is eco-friendly when really they could actually still be buying exploited species,” Hanner stressed.

Researchers have been working to identify and catalogue species from around the world using barcode technology and so far, more than 5,000 of the approximate 30,000 species of fish have been barcoded, the statement said.

The study will be published next week in the journal of Food Research International, the University of Guelph statement said.

I saw this story yesterday on the BBC, which reports on the danger of collapse of bluefin tuna stocks, and didn’t cover it then because I thought it was the sort of thing that would get plenty of media attention. The fact that the not-terribly-environmentally-minded US is supporting a 3-5 year ban on tuna fishing in the North Atlantic says the situation is serious.

I am stunned to see today that when I put "tuna" into Google News, I got all of 5 articles on this issue (BBC, a New York Times editorial, Fish Update, the Telegraph, and the Edmunton Sun).

Readers may note that I have never advocated any particular pro-environment course of action, so I hope you will take this request seriously.

read more | digg story

"The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever"  courtesy George Duran, shown on his show "Ham on the Street" in the cookie episode

Ingredients
2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups (12-ounce package) chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Line baking sheets with parchment or silicone baking sheets or spray cookie sheets with nonstick cooking spray.

Put the flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and stir it with a whisk to combine. Set aside.

Using a hand or stand mixer, beat the butter until it is lighter in color. Slowly add in sugars and beat until it is light and fluffy. Add the eggs 1 at a time and beat until they are incorporated. Stir in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture using low speed, then stir in the chocolate chips. Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are lightly browned around the edges, about 12 to 15 minutes. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes and then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.