FALL 2008

 

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Pg 24 - FOODSTUFF

Pressed to Perfection
Even if your cupboard's stocked with the usual array of vegetable and olive oils, you may want to shake up your cooking routine as we enter the fall season with pumpkin seed oil from Flora Health's new Bija line. These Hydro-Therm and extra-virgin culinary oils, also including almond, sunflower, toasted sesame, and walnut, are unfiltered and unrefined and made with certified organic ingredients. Heritage seeds undergo a unique Old World-inspired pressing method using light toasting, sea salt, and cool filtered water. "Since these delicate healthy fats don't stand up well to high temperatures, pumpkin seed oil is best used uncooked, as a finishing oil," points out New York-based dietician Andrea-Michelle Brekke, MPH, RD, CDN. Brekke suggests drizzling a teaspoon or two over carrot soup, on top of a grated apple and fig salad, or air-popped popcorn. "Pumpkin seed oil provides essential fatty acids, zinc, and vitamin E. Using it in small amounts boosts the flavor profile of your meal, increases absorption of certain vitamins and antioxidants, and promotes satiety," she explains.
www.florahealth.com

Amazing Açaí
Brazilians have been enjoying the demure and purple açaí berry for years, and now Americans are discovering that it's one of the most nutritious foods available. Harvested in the rainforests of Brazil, found on special Amazonian palm trees, açaí has the distinct rich taste of berries melded with chocolate. That appealing flavor isn't the only good thing about this berry-açaí is packed with antioxidants, amino acids, and essential fatty acids. The super-food not only boosts energy levels and sharpens your mental focus, but it's good for your heart and helps protect against cancer. Unless you've got a trip to Brazil planned anytime soon, açaí juice is your best way to sample the high-energy berry.

Bom Dia
Uses berries from only naturally grown Amazonian palm trees, and per Brazilian custom, features a hint of the energy-inducing Amazonian fruit, gurarana. Açaí partners up with either mangosteen, cacao, or antioxidant-rich blueberry or pomegranate.
www.bomdia.com

Bossa Nova
Sweetened by organic agave, this line-up features açaí blended with more unusual pairings, like passion-fruit and raspberry.
www.bossausa.com

Naked
Look for the Purple Machine, with purple plum and Concord grapes, or the Rainforest Açaí, featuring a blend of tropical mango and pineapple. It contains 178 nutrition-packed açaí berries in each 15.2 ounce bottle.
www.nakedjuice.com

O.N.E. Amazon Açaí
Instead of orange juice, reach for this one, containing a solid source of vitamin C, thanks to a splash of acerola (Amazonian cherry). Made from fresh rainforest berries, these come in convenient, single-serve, pull-tab packs.
www.oneacai.com

R.W. Knudsen Organic Açaí
The latest from this famed juice family combines açaí with organic strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, and blackberries, for natural sweetness and a deep color.
www.knudsenjuices.com

Sambazon
On the heels of their successful açaí juices, mixed with exotic ingredients like guarana and yerba mate, and healthy super-greens Açaí smoothies, they've now unveiled Amazon Energy, an organic all-natural energy drink made with açaí and other rainforest botanicals.
www.sambazon.com

Zola Brazilian Superfruit Juice
Made from 100 percent unfiltered açaí pulp, this also features all-natural guarana seed powder, containing 3 percent caffeine for a healthy burst of energy. Look for two new flavors adding organic blueberry and pineapple juices.
www.zolaacai.com

Seduced by Sustainability
As an intern at Virginia's renowned Inn at Little Washington, Kelly Liken was seduced by the sustainable life. "They were so adamant about supporting local farmers. Pick-up trucks pulled up to the kitchen. When I saw it in action and got to know these farmers, that's when I had an epiphany," she recalls. Now, as chef-owner of her eponymous restaurant in resort-laden Vail, Liken's nurturing her own relationships with local farmers, flaunting a seasonal and organic menu whenever possible. "October and November offer the best produce in Colorado," Liken points out. "The local farmer in Boulder grows the most beautiful squash-butternut, acorn, spaghetti. We get our second crop of greens when it cools down; gorgeous arugula, Bibb lettuce, Brussels sprout. Even in the height of the summer it's hard to get those." Brussels sprout make an appearance in caramelized form with toasted pecans and Chardonnay-plumped golden raisins, giving her signature potato- crusted trout an autumnal spin.

The Way Food Should Taste
When chef Brian Hill converted an old Camden, Maine coffee shop into Francine Bistro, there was no doubt he would create a shrine to local, organic cooking. "I grew up on a goat dairy and organic farm," he says. "Just growing up here [nearby Warren, Maine] I got to know the way things should taste. I think that was my greatest lesson." Once he started working in kitchens, Hill remembers chefs telling him how to make certain dishes. After sampling them though, he instantly knew that's not how they were supposed to taste. "A cucumber right out of the field tastes nothing like it does after a few hours in the fridge," he points out. To usher in fall, he's getting excited about preparing local matsutake mushrooms-"roasted on a cedar shingle with herb butter"-and peppery kabocha squash soup with corn and smoked Maine shrimp. And what about that famous Maine lobster? "I love the way it tastes in the fall," Hill notes. "The water hasn't gotten cold yet."

Site We Like
Eat Well Guide, the go-to resource for healthy food raised in a sustainable fashion, is excited about the site's new Green Fork Blog. The blog is designed to promote small-scale farmers and other do-gooders who provide communities with safe, healthy, "green food."

"I've always been passionate about eating and building healthy communities; and more importantly, in sharing that food with others," Lane explains, drawing on her background as a family economist, well versed on issues pertaining to food security and poverty.

"We're working to build a space where many voices, writers, and readers alike, join in a conversation about what it means to eat ethically and sustainably, and how to do that," she says of the blog's mission. "We also want to celebrate the people who are working to create change within our food systems, whether it be through growing food, educating others, or working on policy."

While the blog is ultimately introducing readers to a new way of eating - and the environmental and economic implications of the culinary choices we make-Lane is hard at work on Eat Well's next adventure; a new mapping feature, Eat Well Everywhere, allowing readers to map out sustainably produced food routes throughout the U.S. and Canada. http://blog.eatwellguide.org/

Highlight on Wholesome
After working as the chef de cuisine at Los AngeIes' modern, macrobiotic haven, M Café Chaya, and whipping up healthy meals as Gwyneth Paltrow's personal chef, Lee Gross landed at New York's Broadway East as executive chef. At this subdued mostly vegetarian restaurant marked by a striking green wall of plants, Gross's menu highlights wholesome foods. Inspired by a chef he worked under who had studied macrobiotic cooking, he decided to merge his classical training with this healthful, compassionate sensibility. "She opened my eyes to the connection between food, people, and the planet, and encouraged me to study macrobiotics myself," Gross says. "I think that more and more chefs are finding ways to do this, and have helped push vegetarian, macrobiotic, vegan, and raw foods cooking forward and into the mainstream." One of those forward-thinking dishes you'll find on the fall menu is Gross' casserole of hickory-smoked tempeh, buttercup squash, and sauerkraut with a hard-cider sauce. "I love the fall. Hard-skinned squash is one of my favorite ingredients," he says. "A slow-roasted, cakey, sweet, well-cured squash, one that has been allowed to age off the vine for a few weeks, is one of the most satisfying and nourishing foods of the fall."