Chocolate Bundt Cake

Slices of this chocolate bundt cake spent the better part of the past week in the car with me. Each piece, wrapped in parchment, tucked between the Ak-Mak crackers and a jar of almond butter. It is a fine travel cake. One that can handle a day or two in the car - blizzards, bumps in the road, hairpin turns, and all. Topped with not much more than a sweep of icing, it's unfussy, and ready to go straight from the pan. I make it with a blend of whole wheat and all-purpose flours, lots of yogurt, and the darkest brown sugar I can get my hands on. And it was just the thing to unwrap on a picnic table underneath a grove of sky-scraping redwood trees.

Chocolate Bundt Cake RecipeChocolate Bundt Cake Recipe

This cake gets sweetness and moisture from maple syrup and the darkest of brown sugars. I use beer in the batter, but you can't really taste it outright. More than anything it lends a malty base note and depth of flavor. Go for a not-too-hoppy porter or stout, or chocolate porter or chocolate stout. I know most of you can get your hands on a Guinness, which is totally fine as well.

Chocolate Bundt Cake RecipeChocolate Bundt Cake RecipeChocolate Bundt Cake Recipe

I'm keeping this post short (making my way home) - but for those of you who don't have a bundt pan, I bake ! this bat ter in a wide range of pans. It makes great little cakes, and loaf cakes, and cupcakes. You know the drill, adjust the baking time, and bake until the sides of the cake start to pull away from the pan a bit, and a tester/knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Thank you to my Portland friends for the warm welcome. More pics to come, once I get home and can get some film developed. And I'm going to have to ask you to please forgive any typos :( It has been a long day involving flat tires, tow trucks, and nasty weather. xo -h

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Parents sizzle over pink slime in US school meals

Parents in the US are sizzling over the addition of "pink slime" in their children's food. AFP-Relaxnews pic

WASHINGTON, March 16 It sounds like something only a teenager might care to tuck into, but parents in the United States are sizzling over the idea of pink slime turning up in their youngsters' school meals.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), keeping to long-established practice, is buying 3.2 million kilogrammes of what it prefers to call lean finely textured beef for its National School Lunch Program, which reaches 31 million children, many from low-income families.

It's essentially beef trimmings left-over bits of slaughtered cattle that is mixed in a centrifuge, then treated with a cloud of ammonia in a USDA-approved process intended to deter e.coli contamination.

To a layman's eyes, it looks a bit like strawberry frozen yogurt, before it is folded into hamburger, sausages and other processed meats as filler with no legal obligation in most cases to label the final product accordingly.

Beef Products Inc. of South Dakota, which bills itself as the world's leading producer of what it terms boneless lean beef trimmings, or BLBT, says its product is safe -- and the beef industry's voice in Washington agrees.

The fact is, BLBT is beef, said J Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute in a statement.

In reality, the BLBT production process simply removes fat and makes the remaining beef more lean and suited to a variety of beef products that satisfy consumers' desire for leaner foods.

Giving the meat a puff of ammonium hydroxide, the lobbying group says, perks up its pH or acidity level in order to kill bacteria that might otherwise lead to illness in the event it is improperly cooked.

But as of Wednesday, more than 220,000 consumers begged ! to diffe r. They put their names to an online petition (www.change.org) calling on USDA to stop the use of ground beef containing pink slime in the National School Lunch Program.

School children should be fed real food, not scraps that would otherwise be used for dog food, wrote one signer, Andrew Golub of Bellaire, Texas.

The only reason why it's in our food is because it lowers costs for the purveyor and reaps a huge profit for the company that makes it, food blogger Bettina Siegel (www.thelunchtray.com), who launched the petition, told AFP.

So it upsets me that consumers who think they're getting 100 per cent ground beef might actually be getting up to 15 per cent pink slime, and that we're feeding this stuff to our school kids, who have no say in the matter.

She added: The overwhelming support of the petition has as much to do with the fact that many consumers are just outraged that USDA allows this stuff in ground beef without any labelling at all.

Pink slime got its unflattering nickname from microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein, who as a USDA food inspector investigating a food bacteria outbreak in 2002 toured a Beef Products plant and recoiled at what he found.

I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labelling, he said in an email to colleagues that came to light in the New York Times seven years later.

Zirnstein still feels outraged.

I have a two-year-old son, Zirnstein who grinds his own meat at home told the online newspaper The Daily earlier this month, and you better believe I don't want him eating pink slime when he starts going to school.

British celebrity chef Jaime Oliver, who campaigns for better school food, also lashed out at pink slime in 2011 in his Food Revolution television series, alleging it was present in 70 per cent of all ground beef products.

That kind of puts it everywhere, he said.

Several fast food chains, including McDonald! 9;s, sub sequently declared they would cease beefing up their burgers with lean finely textured beef.

Red meat in general has been getting a bad rap of late.

On Monday, a long-running Harvard University study of more than 120,000 people set out what its authors called clear evidence that eating red meat can boost a person's risk of dying young by up to 20 per cent.

In Chicago, meanwhile, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine put up billboards this week linking processed meats to colon cancer with the slogan: Hot Dogs Cause Butt Cancer.

To which the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council riposted: Hot dogs are a great Chicago tradition... They come in a variety of nutrition and taste formulas and they are an excellent source of protein, vitamins and minerals. AFP-Relaxnews

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potato knish, two ways

potato knish, two ways

Where have I been, you ask? Did I fly off to a small Caribbean island again, only to return to rub it in? Did my book project or adorable distraction eat me alive again? For once, no. I have actually been out climbing another (slightly smaller) culinary Mount Everest for you, and I have returned bearing not one, but two recipes.

both get peeled
onion, leek

Ive been wanting to make potato knish almost as long as Ive had this site. I thought Id finally tackle it this winter, when carbs-for-warmth are the order of the day but New York up and decided to not have a winter this year and so it was a 60 degree day or never. Im glad I went with it as knish are quintessentially old New York, brought to the Lower East Side tenements by Jewish Eastern European immigrants who knew, like most of our forefathers did, how to stretch staples into belly-filling delights.

russet potatoes and caramelized onions

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smitten kitchen 2006-2012. |permalink to potato knish, two ways | 16 comments to date | see more: Jewish, Kale, Leeks, Photo, Potatoes, Vegetarian, Winter


S.Wine Cafe @ Publika

Hoping to hog the limelight this month at Publika, here's The BIG Group's first eatery that's promiscuously porky.

We're casting pearls of praise before this S.Wine, thanks to oink-worthy originals like this meaty salad, which features something for everyone. Carnivores can go hog-wild for warm nuggets of pork belly confit, while leaf-lovers will lick their lips over assorted Asian greens with watermelon & lychee in a tangy peanut dressing.

Momofuku-inspired pork buns. Finger-burning steamed mantao, sandwiching irredeemably sinful sponges of Dongpo pork belly. We'll pause for a moment to give thanks to the Song Dynasty Poet Su Dongpo, whose culinary creation of red-braised pork still supplies so much satisfaction nearly a millennium after his lifetime.

Going belly-up with our orders, all of which utilize a single, singular part of the pig's anatomy: smoky-juicy pork belly satay with kitchen-made peanut-pineapple sauce.

Five-spice Chinese roast pork belly with Japanese cucumber & pineapple chili sauce. Look a little too lean for your liking? It might be worth begging the kitchen for a more lardy cut.

Auspiciousness abounds: on the evening of S.Wine's opening, the Luis Philipe Edwards winery of Chile conducted a wine appreciation session at Ben's Independent Grocer, within which S.Wine is hidden. We piggybacked on this tasting for five minutes, but the call of the boar proved too strong for us to tarry too long.

With everything from Parma ham & peach salad to whole roast pork ribs with crackling on S.Wine's menu, not to mention breakfast platters like Mexican pulled pork with poached eggs & avocado-feta mash on toast, everyone who can eat pork might head here in the weeks to come. No mean achievement _ that'll do, pig, that'll do.



!

S.Wine Cafe @ Ben's Independent Grocer,
Publika, Solaris Dutamas, Kuala Lumpur.
Open daily through 10pm, starting 11am weekdays & 9am weekends.