Can real home cooking make a comeback? I've got my hopes up, but the odds are against it. Despite the success of local farmers' markets and the popularity of the Food Network, Americans now spend only 30 minutes a day in the kitchen. If that includes preparing three meals, it's just enough time to heat and serve. Where is the 21st century Julia Child who will convince consumers that cooking real food is easy and fun?
Journalist and food activist Michael Pollin is the most recent, if less photogenic, candidate for the job. Pollin has just published a book about the pleasures of learning how to cook and bake. Cooked follows a decade of reporting on the state of America's food supply. In The Omnivore's Dilemna he described the conditions on organic and large scale industrial farms. Pollin titled his second book In Defense of Food, a manifesto, that reveals how cynical corporate food giants have engineered the nutritional impoverishment of America's food ingredients in the name of convenience.
Despite all the claims on food packages, the healthiest way to eat is to cook your own food. It's a given. My goal is to entice today's convenience-driven cooks back into the kitchen, one shortcut at a time. In that respect, Michael Pollin's greatest contribution to home cooks is a little manual entitled Food Rules. He has turned what he learned writing his first two books into a shopping and portion-sizing guide for healthy family meals.
I kept Pollin's rules in mind when I purchased canned black beans this past week. I chose an organic brand and looked for a 'no BPA' on the label.' I lost some of the nutrients with this shortcut, but I save an hour of cooking time, and the beans retained their rich, mushroomy flavor. A bottle of Frontera Grill's salsa was a great time saver when I didn't have the fresh ingredients or the time to make my own. Both the refried beans and the salsa contained five or less ingredients. That's the magic number that separates what Pollin calls a "food" from a "food product".
Breakfast is one of my family’s three favorite meals of the day, and black bean cakes served with a four minute egg and two tablespoons of the bottled salsa make a quick delicious start to the day. For dinner, I arrange whole poached shrimp on the bean cakes and garnish with a rough-cut fresh salsa. Another favorite companion for these cakes is salmon, for which the seasonal wild sockeye is a perfect choice.
Recipe Link: Black Bean Cakes
Recipe Link: QUICK SALSA
