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Being creative with food

by Bill Rutherford
| May 12, 2010 9:00 PM

Last summer I found myself in an unhealthy quick food quagmire. Life became busy and the food I ate, simple. With my garden two months from producing and my physical activity increasing, canned chili, frozen corn dogs, heat and serve pizza and an occasional blackened salmon Caesar became my diet. My belt tightened and my heart began to ache. As my palate entered culinary Siberia, anything salty and processed satisfied.

I rediscovered slow food while eating at Syringa Japanese Cafe and Sushi Bar with my wife and friends. Textures, flavors and seasoning recently forgotten were now remembered. Canned chili lost its appeal to carrot ginger soup. Laughing with friends while eating great food does something good for the soul and my food soul was hurting.

The conversation warmed when my wife challenged, "What is your favorite restaurant?" My wife offered the Spokane vegetarian restaurant, Mizuna's, which creates grain and vegetarian (and now meat) feasts prepared with an artistic and organic flare. I quickly picked two restaurants. First is the River Cafe in Calgary, Alberta, for its intelligent mix of opulent yet rustic wild game. I love wild game. Next, The Bistro Jeanty in Yountville, Calif., for its authentic French bistro philosophy and classic cream of tomato soup topped with puff pastry - yum! When visiting two weeks ago I ordered the escargot for dessert. The snails in buttery garlic sauce were better than any chocolate or pastry.

Our more-traveled friends first offered the iconic French Laundry in the Napa Valley for their, "Have to do before you die," list and spoke of simple artesian restaurants in France and Spain with fish caught the day of service and ingredients harvested within 5 miles of the restaurant. My culinary passion is reborn.

During my journey to culinary health, I rediscovered my favorite things forgotten; favorite foods learned from cheffing in restaurants throughout the west, local foods eaten while living in New Mexico, South Dakota, Champaign, Ill., Northern California and Coeur d'Alene and foods discovered from reading cookbooks and magazines focusing on regional foods. Most importantly, I drug my Culinary Institute of America textbooks, binders and notes from their disrespected bottom shelf position to the honored center of the bookcase. I opened them daily and relived my experience attending one of the best culinary schools in the world.

When life gets wacky and stress hits volcanic status, I enter the kitchen. Cooking and eating great food satisfies the tummy and calms the mind. So, "when the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel, so bad." Here are a few of my favorite things!

• Homemade yogurt - I use yogurt on everything. It takes 10 minutes to make and 10 hours to cook in a yogurt maker, and is used in place of sour cream, crme fresh, in salad dressing and low calorie cream sauces. Placed in cheesecloth and strained overnight, homemade yogurt becomes Greek cheese which broadens its appeal. It becomes thicker and creamier and can top soup, stirred into pasta, coats lamb prior to breading and is the main ingredient for the famous Greek condiment, tzatziki. I sweeten my yogurt with honey and build a parfait mixed with fresh fruit and homemade granola. The recipe is easy - bring 1 percent milk to 185 degrees for five minutes then cool to 115 degrees. Add two big spoons of yogurt with active cultures and retain the 115 degrees for 10 hours a yogurt maker works perfectly for this.

• Salt - all salt is not created equally. In the Rutherford Culinary Academy I do a salt tasting - one might say, yuck! This experience changes one's perspective of what salt really is and what it does to food. I challenge the readers of this column to taste four different salty flavor profiles and e-mail me your experience. Have a party. Celebrate food and taste salt. Have cucumbers, bread and water available for tasters to neutralize their palates between tastes. First taste ionized table salt. Notice the dry, metallic one-tone flavor of the salt. Next, coarse kosher salt. Immediately the taster should notice a cleaner, more palatable note to the salt. Thirdly, taste sea salt (a good quality fleur de sel and not a cheap large cardboard container of "sea salt") and notice the clean, slightly ocean taste of the granules. Lastly taste a good quality, Southeast Asian fish sauce, or a lemon, Parmesan cheese, lime, a vinegar based hot sauce and anchovies. These foods all add flavor to food, which eliminates the need for salt. Have fun with the experiment.

• Olive oil - This is where things get difficult and sometimes expensive. Olive oil comes in different grades. Extra virgin - acid content not more than 1 percent, Sopraffino virgin - acidic content not more than 1.5 percent, Fino virgin - acidic content not more than 3 percent and Virgin - acidic content not more than 4 percent. Avoid any oil with different labels than these. Instead choose vegetable oil or butter. Olive oil with an acid rate of 4 percent or greater is usually too acidic to satisfy most culinary palates. Olive oil labeled pomace is from the pits and skins of the olive and reserved only for fuel in Europe but sold widely in the United States. Run quickly away from this type of olive oil. So, what is good olive oil? Price does not dictate quality or appeasable flavor profile. Buy four or five bottles of extra virgin oil at a price you can afford. Taste them all with bread and on lettuce and decide which fits your palate. Some cooks appreciate strong and dark, bitter oils while others desire lighter colored mild oils. Decide what you like and purchase it.

• Balsamic vinegar - Good vinegar is aged a minimum of 12 years in a battery of seven barrels of successively smaller sizes. The casks are made of different woods like chestnut, acacia, cherry, oak, mulberry, ash, and, in the past, juniper. Traditional vinegar can be 80 years old and as thick as oil. Treat yourself to a culinary treasure and purchase an old-world balsamic, drizzle it on figs or homemade vanilla ice cream and enjoy the best culinary experience imagined.

• Change beef burger to bison, garden or turkey burger - this change has added variety and extended my life. Bison makes the best tasting burger in the world. If cooked properly (medium rare), bison tastes richer than beef, has half the calories, less cholesterol, more iron and more vitamin b-12 than salmon, chicken, pork and beef. Not bad for a protein indigenous to America. Turkey follows the nutritional lead of bison and the vegetarian garden burger option satisfies with a strip of vegetarian bacon, grilled onions and Tillamook reserve extra sharp cheddar cheese on a toasted bun. You will not miss the meat.

• Other suggestions include making your own vinaigrette, buying locally grown food from local producers, canning vegetables and fruits from local ranches and farms, cooking from scratch - pasta, tortillas, sauces, breads, muffins and soups. Purchase meat and eggs from local producers, subscribe to magazines, buy books about cooking and become a self-trained chef.

Remember - if all else fails, cook food from your past. Put traditional family food back into your life. Food is tied to memories and if food is memorable, so will be the new memories created. Psychologically, we create a flashbulb memory of each positive and negative event we enter. If the event is happy, we wish for the event to continue. If the event is unhappy, we desire it to end. Invent or create happy food experiences and allow them to continue.

Bill Rutherford is a psychotherapist, public speaker, elementary school counselor, adjunct college psychology instructor and executive chef, and owner of Rutherford Education Group. Please e-mail him at bprutherford@hotmail.com and check out www.foodforthoughtcda.com.