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Cooking Mediterranean
What exactly defines Mediterranean cuisine? The region stretches from Spain to Turkey and its cuisine blends classic European foods like pasta, wine, and sweets with Middle Eastern favorites such as spit-roasted meats, yogurt, and flat breads. Some of the ingredients most commonly associated with the Mediterranean are olives and olive oil, chick peas (garbanzo beans), couscous, oregano, garlic, basil, tomatoes, and a variety of nuts.
Mediterranean cuisine limits the use of meats and eggs, relying instead on low fat products like fruits, vegetables and grains. The foods are also locally grown or gathered, seasonally fresh, and minimally processed, making Mediterranean dishes full of flavor and nutrients.
You probably wonder how can you incorporate the delicious flavors of the Mediterranean into your diet?
One of the easiest and most popular ways is with a Greek salad, which can be quickly assembled with pre-packaged salad greens and bottled Greek dressing. Toss in some black olives, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese and you've got a flavour-packed dish that's good for you too.
Cereal Facts
The modern packaged breakfast-food industry owes its beginnings to an American religious sect, the Seventh-day Adventists, who wished to avoid consumption of animal foods. In the 1860s they organized the Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, Mich., later renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium. James Jackson of Dansville, N.Y., produced a cereal food by baking whole-meal dough in thin sheets, breaking and regrinding into small chunks, rebaking and regrinding. J.H. Kellogg of Battle Creek made biscuits about one-half inch thick from a dough mixture of wheatmeal, oatmeal, and cornmeal. The dough was baked until it was fairly dry and turning brown, and the product was ground and packed. A patient at the sanitarium, C.W. Post, saw the possibilities in such a product entirely apart from the original conception of healthfulness and started a business. Kellogg's brother, W.K. Kellogg, did likewise, and the breakfast-food industry was launched, soon achieving mass sales of cereal products in flaked, granular, shredded, and puffed forms, with flavour obtained by roasting and the addition of sugar.
Wheat and rice flakes are manufactured, but most flaked breakfast foods are made from corn (maize), usually of the yellow type, broken down into grits and cooked under pressure with flavouring syrup consisting of sugar, nondiastatic malt, and other ingredients. Cooking is often accomplished in slowly rotating retorts under steam pressure.
After leaving the cooker, the lumps (containing about 33 percent water) are broken down by revolving reels and sent to driers. These are usually large tubes extending vertically, through several stories, with the wet product entering the top and encountering a current of hot air (65° C, or 150° F). Other types of driers consist of horizontal rotating cylinders with steam-heated pipes running horizontally. The drying process reduces moisture to about 20 percent, and the product is transferred to tempering bins for up to 24 hours, to even moisture distribution.
The product is next flaked by passing it between large steel cylinders (180–200 revolutions per minute), with the rolls cooled by internal water circulation. The cooked and rather soft flakes then proceed to rotating toasting ovens (normally gas-fired), where the flakes tumble through perforated drums. This treatment requires two to three minutes at 225° C (550° F). The product is dehydrated, toasted, and slightly blistered. After toasting it is cooled by circulating air, and at this stage enrichment by sprays may be carried out.
The manufacture of wheat flakes is similar to that of corn flakes. Special machinery separates the individual grains so that they can be flaked and finally toasted.
Bismati Rice
This aromatic long grain rice from India and Pakistan has slender, fragrant grains and a nutty flavour. You can buy the white or brown variety. Please note that brown basmati has more fiber and stronger flavour, but it takes twice as long to cook as white.
Bismati rice is an excellent source of folate, and a good source of iron, niacin and thiamin.
How to cook
Wash the rice in cold water to remove dirt and prevent stickiness. Simmer 1 part rice in 1 1/2 parts salted water for 15 to 20 minutes.
How to use
Bismati rice is delicious as a side dish, especially with Indian and Middle Eastern meals, because the grains remain tender, separate and firm even when cooked through.
Balsamic Vinegar
You must have heard of balsamic vinegar and the more adventurous of you have perhaps bought some and tried it. I have been using it for a while, but until recently I didn't know much about - where it comes from, why is it called 'balsamic', what is in it.
So, here are some interesting facts:
'Balsamic' means 'like balsam - and balsam is an aromatic resin - balsamic vinegar simply refers to the fact that it is thick (resin like) and aromatic.
The unique and traditional balsamic vinegar comes from Modena, Italy and is made from the 'must' (unfermented juice) of mainly the Trebbiano grape, but other grapes are used too, for the ones who know much about grape varieties, these are - Lambrusco, Ancellotta, Sauvignon and Sgavetta.
The must, which contains no additives, is boiled down in open pots over a direct flame. The extract (concentrated juice) from this cooking is now a fruity syrup. At this point some 'mother' of vinegar can be added. ('Mother' is a stringy, slimy substance that forms on the surface of vinegar, composed of various yeast and bacteria [especially mycoderma aceti] that cause fermentation in wine and cider, and turn it into acetic acid - vinegar).
The vinegar is then aged in barrels of different woods.
Each producer has their own secret progression of wooden barrels usually including chestnut, ash tree, cherry, mulberry, juniper and oak.
Before the vinegar can be sold in shops, it must be at least 6 years old.
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