Zester Daily

I don’t know anyone who wakes up on Jan. 1 cheering, “Woo-hoo, I can’t wait to go on a diet.” Most of us hate to diet. But as a rite of passing into a new year with well-intentioned resolution, The Diet is an annual dilemma that needs to be looked at a bit differently. In this first month of 2013, let’s resolve not to diet. Let’s anti-diet.

You can already see the ads on TV. Lose weight with this system, here’s an impossible-to-believe before-and-after shot of [insert you] after some charlatan’s weight-loss scam. We know most of these don’t work and don’t last. You’ve got the low-carb diet, the calorie-restriction diet, the açai berry diet — all cruel and unusual over a prolonged period. And not sustainable either.

This discussion is mostly for post-holiday bellies and diminishing a gut that’s bigger now than it was before Thanksgiving. It is not for anyone diagnosed as morbidly obese. For that you need medical advice. But anyone looking for a resolution you can live with should be thinking about wellness. And that means a new way of eating and of shopping, getting into a heartfelt ritual of improving the quality of the food you eat.

Here are five candid points that have helped me and could possibly help you.

1. Eat clean

This means getting habituated to eating better,  shopping for, and simply cooking, fresh fruits and vegetables and a piece of meat or fish for dinner. Stay away from what I view as unclean food, usually posing as low-calorie frozen dinners. They’re not lean on unnatural ingredients and certainly not anything resembling cuisine. Another example is a commercial spinach dip available at a big box member store. It’s got an ingredient label of biblical proportions. Sure, the dip’s got spinach and dairy, but it also includes hydrolized soy protein, high fructose corn syrup. What’s this stuff? Why not wilt some fresh spinach (or defrost frozen spinach) and mix it with some garlic, Worcestershire and real sour cream or thick yogurt? Dinner is perhaps a serving of fresh chicken with two vegetables. Those vegetables might be steamed peas and mashed sweet potato. That’s clean.

2. Stop eating crap

Yes, I said crap. The commercial spinach dip, mentioned above, is unnatural. Potato chips as a side dish with a sandwich are nutritionally ridiculous. Cheetos, as yummy as they are for salt addicts, are not food. Twizzlers aren’t food. Pizza has trick nutrition, because with it calories and fats can pile up fast. I recommend avoiding it while you’re getting started this year. Ignore nutritionists who encourage daylong snacking. I say stop snacking, and this should help a few pounds here and there melt away.

Don’t forget the  stop-eating-crap rule when you’re eating out too. Over the next couple of weeks, don’t get trapped in the salad-is-diet-food myth. There’s low nutrition in lettuce and lots of calories in dressing. When you find yourself out for lunch or dinner, make your own meal. Look over a menu to see what ingredients are on it, then ask the waiter to tell the chef you want the chicken breast out of the chicken sandwich and bring it with the side of chard that comes with the steak entrée. Sometimes the chef can be very obliging.

3. Get used to being a little hungry

This rule goes well with the stop-snacking rule. Some experts say hunger pangs send the body into starvation mode. Snacking your way to satiety is self-defeating.

A few hunger pangs are a sign your stomach is getting accustomed to less. Also, eat dinner early so you’re up more hours to burn calories. You may go to bed a bit hungry, but there’s always breakfast eight hours away.

4. Go to a farmers market

You’ll eat seasonally and you’ll be able to practice one of the best pieces of nutrition advice ever to come along: Eat your colors. Buy orange produce such as winter squash, yams, carrots and oranges. Go green with chard, spinach, kale, broccoli, even frozen peas. Get your red from beets, red cabbage and pomegranates. If you hate beets, don’t eat them. The variety from eating colors keeps boredom at bay. A farmers market will awaken your interest in fresh food, which obviously requires some skill to cook, and that brings me to the next rule.

5. Learn to cook

Zester readers may know more than the average reluctant cook about getting a meal on the table, but many people indulge their interest in food by eating out and making excuses for not cooking.

Microwaved chicken that tastes like baked. Credit: Elaine Corn

You won’t think that time spent cooking robs you of time spent doing other things if you decide that cooking is one of those other things. Taking charge of what goes into your body benefits you on many fronts: your budget, your nutrition and your control of all ingredients that enter your body. If you regard the knobs on a stove like they’re controls on a nuclear reactor, then cook in your microwave. About 99% of homes have microwaves. I’ve used the microwave to cook an entire meal that’s clean, nutritious and not too expensive.

Ultimately if you can make yourself a reasonable promise, you’ll feel better, you’ll lose that holiday gut, and you may well be on your way to some new good habits.

“Baked” Chicken From the Microwave

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 whole cut-up fryer, bones in, pieces rinsed and dried with paper towel

Salt and ground black pepper

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon oregano (leafy type, not powdered)

Few sprinkles paprika, for color and a bit of kick

Directions

1. To make the breasts of relative size to the rest of the pieces, cut the breasts in half crosswise. Arrange chicken pieces on a microwavable large dinner plate like spokes, with the plump ends along the rim of the plate and narrower ends toward the center.

2. Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with oregano and paprika. Do not cover.

3. In a microwave equipped with a turntable, microwave on high, in 5-minute intervals, for up to a total of 10 to 15 minutes*, until meat is browned and no longer pink inside.

4. Serve with fresh microwaved green beans and half a sweet potato.

* Depending on microwave’s wattage power, your chicken may cook very quickly or slowly. At home, mine is done in about 12 minutes. At a friend’s house with an older model, the chicken was done in 14 minutes. You can stop the microwave at any time to check progress.

Microwaved Yam

Serves 2

This is the easiest type of produce to microwave.

Ingredients

1 medium-sized yam

Dab of butter

Directions

1. Halve yam lengthwise. Lay both pieces on a large dinner plate, flat side down. Puncture several air slits in the skin for steam to escape. Do not cover.

2. Microwave on high for 5 minutes. Test doneness by piercing with sharp knife. If it glides easily into the yam, the yam is done. If not, microwave 1 minute more.

3. Turn yam halves over, cut slits and top each with a small dab of butter. Serve hot.

Microwaved Fresh Green Beans With Butter

Serves 2 or 3

Ingredients

⅓ pound green beans (pick tender ones instead of big fat ones)

Sprinkling of salt

1 pat of butter

Directions

1. Trim stems off beans. Set beans in a shallow bowl with a tablespoon of water. Sprinkle with salt. Set dab of butter in center.

2. Cover the bowl with a plate. Steam-microwave for 90 seconds. If the beans are still too crunchy for your taste, microwave for another 15 seconds. Scoop the beans out of bowl with a slotted spoon and set on the serving plate with the chicken and yam.

Healthy “baked” chicken, green beans and yams from the microwave. Credit: Elaine Corn

We’ve gathered around a rustic wooden table at Don Alfredo Pollos al Pastor, a country restaurant sitting 7,000 feet in the Nahuatzén Mountains, an hour west of Morelia, Michoacán, in the colonial town of Pátzcuaro, Mexico. The wait for the Mexican food is a torment. Aromas of grilling meat hit us hard and make us pant through the thinner air in anticipation of what’s to come.

I sip an amber Victoria beer and drift into memories of the restaurant in the late 1980s, when the place was nothing more than a roadside shack with a dirt floor and corrugated metal roof. Then we sat at wobbly metal tables on rusted chairs boasting Cola-Cola logos for decor.

We were there for the food. We didn’t have to think about it. The menu was simple: chicken, handmade corn tortillas, soupy pink beans and a fresh table salsa made with the local heat-packing chile manzano (Capsicum pubescens), onions and sour oranges. If we were lucky and there on a weekend, they’d have a few baby lamb legs over a fire. As time has passed, the lamb has become so popular the restaurant’s simple terracotta serving plates now boast a new hand-lettered name: Don Alfredo Pollos y Borrego al Pastor (chicken and lamb over coals).

Before entering the larger space today — now with a real concrete floor and solid roof — we gape at the main attraction, a trench 20 feet long and 4 feet wide filled with a long, center mound of glowing embers of white mesquite. On either side of the trench are a few dozen 4-foot spiked metal rods, each impaling three chickens, lined up in two neat rows. The bright yellow flesh of the birds comes from their diet of fluorescent orange marigolds. Combine this and the high temperature of the coals, and you have incomparable flavor and beautifully charred crisp, golden skin.

A flamenco twist to a Mexican surprise

The biggest surprise lies at the far end of one row — 10 additional steel rods with a few kilos of marinated pork hanging from each rod, pouring out aromas the way only pork can. The chunks of meat appear dark from the mesquite, but not a speck of blackened pork is anywhere in sight. Roasting meat is in the blood of these cooks; they rotate and swivel the rods like turns of flamenco, flourish and sizzle, flourish and sizzle.

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The popular Michoacán chile manzano is Mexico's only chile with black seeds. Credit: Nancy Zaslavsky

It has been a long, dry season for lovers of flesh in this part of the world. Pork is celebrated after a Lenten stretch and the Easter lambs have all been eaten. I’ve had my share, perhaps more than my share, of succulent carnitas over the years here in Michoacán, the carnitas capital of the world, but this young pork is primal perfection. These pigs are Mexicans, raised to be fat and placed upon a hot fire, not like their American cousins bred to be lean, mean and articulated muscle machines. Their flavor comes from mesquite smoke and bubbling fat-basted meat cooked lowly and slowly to achieve a moist interior and a mahogany-colored, stunningly brittle skin.

As orders fly in, the cooks select chicken or pork from the spikes and transfer it to a chopping block. A few precision hacks with a machete, a squirt of sour orange juice over the crunchy spitting skin, a sprinkle of salt and the platter is on its way to the table. The torture is over, the waiting is complete and satisfaction is imminent.

Not more than 10 minutes and a half bottle of beer have been swallowed since we passed through the doorway, but they were slow Mexican minutes and we have the patience of hungry Americans, which is to say none.

We ravenously descend on our platters. The waiter has brought pork, chicken and warm corn tortillas. There is a growling silence until, one by one, tortillas are piled with copious quantities of meat and that sweat-inducing table salsa to make perfect tacos. One bite says everything; the wait was worth it. Full grinning mouths smile at each other across the table. We are reduced to happy noises, for there are no words worth the pause.

Fresh Chile Manzano and Sour Orange Table Salsa

You may substitute one juice orange and one Mexican (aka Key) lime to achieve a similar flavor to Don Alfredo’s sour orange, a type of Seville orange primarily used in marmalade. A chile manzano, rocoto or perón (Capsicum pubescens) looks like a huge habañero, so to be sure that you have the right chile cut it open, manzano seeds are black.

Makes about 1½ cups

Ingredients

1 white onion (3 inches), peeled and finely chopped

½ chile manzano, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

2 Mexican sour oranges, juiced

Sea or kosher salt to taste

Directions

Stir all the ingredients in a serving bowl. Serve at room temperature.

Don Alfredo Pollos y Barrego Al Pastor, Tanganxuan intersection on the Periférico (aka the lower end of Libramiento, before it enters the Glorieta opposite the Bodega Aurrerá supermarket), Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. Telephone: (434) 342-3151. (The original location, and still the best.) A second spot is on the autopista Morelia-Pátzcuaro, Km. 6. Telephone: (443) 132-5975.

Top photo: Pork and chickens over mesquite in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico. Credit: Nancy Zaslavsky

“Every 30 minutes a farmer in India kills himself.” This frightening fact is pointed out in “Bitter Seeds,” the third documentary in “The Globalization Trilogy” directed by Micha Peled. The 12-year project aims to generate debate about public policy and consumer choices in some complex issues relevant to all of us. Peled is the founder of the nonprofit Teddy Bear Films, which he created to make issue-oriented films such as “Will My Mother Go Back to Berlin?” and “Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town.”

“Bitter Seeds” follows a season in a village in India from planting to harvest. There are three important stories in this film, each revolving around the multinational corporate takeover of India’s seed market and the effect it has on farmers and farming all over India and the world.

Like most of his neighbors, the protagonist in the film, Ram Krishna, must engage a money-lender to pay for the mounting costs of modern farming; he puts his land up as collateral.

The only seeds available in India now are GMOs (genetically modified organisms), which require farmers to pay an annual royalty each time they are replanted. The GMOs need additional fertilizers, and as the seasons move forward, more insecticides and pesticides. The soil in which these seeds are planted requires more water. All of which means more and more money for the farmer to lay out.

As Krishna’s story moves forward, his cotton is attacked by mealy worms, which threaten to destroy his entire crop. His daughter has reached marrying age and Krishna must find money for her dowry.

Farmers devastated by GMO seeds

Another story weaving in and out of the film is that of a neighboring girl in college who has recently lost her father to suicide, an end claiming lives all over India’s farmlands. She wants to tell his story, along with the stories of all the other suicide victims in the area. Her research and intuition have shown her that at the root of these suicides are GMO seeds. Her family is not behind her desire to become a journalist or to expose the family story, but this young woman moves ahead, interviewing her neighbors.

In the film we also meet a seed salesman who argues that GMO seeds are better than the seeds the farmers previously used, and Vandana Shiva, an activist who speaks strongly about the damage the GMO seeds have done to the agricultural system throughout India and the world.

“Bitter Seeds,” like “Food, Inc.,” shows how much we don’t know about genetically modified seeds, their hidden costs and health effects. The GMO industry vigorously fights in the United States as well as in other countries to prevent mandatory listing of GMO foods on product ingredient labels. This should at the very least raise our concern.

The recent announcement by BASF (the world’s leading chemical company) that it is abandoning its production of GMO crops in Europe because of a lack of acceptance “from the majority of consumers, farmers and politicians” was an acknowledgement of a reality many biotechnology companies have been hesitant to countenance: Europe does not like genetically modified crops.

The GMO labeling debate

Although there is a strong and organized movement pushing for labeling in the United States, why does the U.S. Food and Drug Administration think it’s OK to consider genetically modified seeds harmless until proven otherwise? Why isn’t it the other way around? Why is our health not being protected unless and until GMO seeds can be shown to be totally safe?

Earth Open Source is a nonprofit organization dedicated to assuring the sustainability, security and safety of the global system. In June 2012, it published “GMO Myths and Truths: An Evidence-Based Examination of the Claims Made for the Safety and Efficacy of Genetically Modified Crops” by Michael Antoniou of Kings College London School of Medicine in the U.K.; Claire Robinson, research director of Earth Open Source; and John Fagan, an early voice in the scientific debate on genetic engineering. In the report, the authors explain how genetic engineering poses special risks, claiming that GMO foods can be toxic or allergenic; how GMO feed affects the health of animals; how GMO seeds do not increase crop yield potential; how studies claiming the safety of GMO crops are generally industry-linked and therefore biased. Anyone interested in the “other side of the story” from that fed to citizens by the industry should read this report.

The number of farmers markets in this country has more than doubled in the last three years. Locavorism has become more than a buzzword, it’s an accepted way of eating. People want to know who their farmers are and how they are growing the food. Is it sustainable, organic and/or biodynamic? What seeds were used? People throughout the world are demanding that anything grown with GMO seeds at the very least be labeled. Until there is word that crops grown from GMO seeds are as good for us as their unmodified counterparts, perhaps it is best to avoid them.

Photo: Wheat seeds. Credit: mishooo / iStockphoto.com

About six months ago, I salvaged a beautiful marinara sauce jar that I intended to refill with home-canned sweet pickles made using my mother’s recipe.  And if I hadn’t taken a 12-week course to become a certified Master Food Preserver, I might have used that as a canning jar and possibly poisoned my whole family.

The glass jar has a classic shape and reads “Mason” on the side but it is, in fact, a faux Mason jar. And if you’re planning to do home canning that really matters.

A brief history of canning jars

The original Mason jar was invented by John Landis Mason in 1858, and its threaded top was a revolutionary concept in food preservation. Mason’s system was relatively cheap, easy to use and far less messy than the previously used method, which required sealing glass jars with a flat tin lid and sealing wax.

A selection of empty canning jars. Credit: Susan Lutz

Unfortunately for Mason, he didn’t renew his patent after it expired in 1879, and he never made the fortune that I believe was rightfully his. In 1915, Alexander Kerr improved on Mason’s concept by inventing the two-part lid — a flat metal top with a rubber gasket that seals to the glass jar using a threaded metal ring. Nearly 100 years later, this is still the most widely preferred system for home food preservation.

All canning jars are not created equal

Mason-type jars are remarkably similar to commercial pint- and quart-size jars, like my marinara sauce jar. But there’s an important difference. Real Mason-type jars have a wider rim that gives them a better sealing surface. They are also tempered more than the jars that once held a commercially-canned product so they more easily resist cracking and breaking under the high pressure needed for pressure canning.

Real Mason-type jars have two types of mouths. A “regular-mouth” jar gets slightly smaller near the top. This “neck” helps hold the preserved food under the liquid level, which is imperative for proper food preservation. A regular-mouth canning jar cannot be used for freezing because the smaller neck doesn’t allow for the expansion of liquids as they freeze. A “wide-mouth” jar has straight sides, and it’s great for foods that might be hard to put in or pull out of a regular-mouth jar. They are also safe for freezing.

Just as there are different knives for cutting different types of food, there are also a variety of canning jars made to properly preserve different kinds of food. Here’s a rundown of the canning jars I have on my pantry shelves right now  and the reasons I like each of them.

• Wide-mouth half-gallon jar: The National Center for Home Food Preservation recommends using half-gallon jars only for canning apple juice and grape juice. Because of their large size, these jars have poor heat penetration, and it’s impossible to ensure that the food in the center of the jar has been adequately heated. I use my half-gallon jars to store large quantities of cereal and pasta.
• Regular-mouth quart jar: This is perhaps the most versatile canning jar. It’s good for pickles, juices and most other sliced fruits and vegetables. It also holds just the right amount for use in a single recipe, especially if you’re pressure canning beans or tomatoes.
• Wide-mouth quart jar: This workhorse is ideal for large chunks of fruits and vegetables. Sadly, I’ve experienced more sealing failures with wide-mouth jars, but I like the idea that I could use them in the freezer if I wanted to.
• The commercial tomato sauce jar: This jar is not a real canning jar in spite of being labeled “Atlas Mason.” According to the center, this type of jar may be used with a two-part lid for canning high-acid foods in a hot-water bath, but there is a greater possibility of sealing failures and jar breakage. This jar also has a smaller neck than a regular-mouth quart jar, which makes it harder to fill. I use them for storing dry goods, but never for canning.
• Regular-mouth pint jar:This is one of the most widely used jars in my kitchen and all of mine are full of sweet pickles at the moment.
  

  Canning jars full of loquat butter, peach-ginger jam, grape jelly, tomato preserves, and sweet pickles. Credit: Susan Lutz

• 12-ounce jelly jar: This is smaller than a pint jar (16 ounces) so it’s perfect for gift-giving. You can give away a decent-sized amount of jelly, or anything else, without using up too much product in one jar. The decorative fruit pattern on the side of the jar makes it a “jelly jar,” but I refused to be limited by themed decoration.
• Half-pint jelly jar: This is my preferred jar for jams, jellies, preserves and fruit butters. Most of the recipes in my favorite preservation book of the moment, “So Easy to Preserve,” call for half-pint jars.
• Wide-mouth half-pint jar: I’ve inherited a few of these and they’re a nice shape, but they take up more room in the canner than the taller half-pint jars so I don’t use them too often for canning. They’re great for giving gifts of non-canned items, such as homemade goat cheese. (another obsession of mine).
• 4-ounce quilted jelly jar: This is the jar marketed as the “right size” for gift-giving. I disagree. It’s a very cute jar, but my friends complain that they don’t get enough jelly so I usually use the half-pint (8-ounce) or 12-ounce size instead.

These distinctions may seem obscure because a jar’s a jar, right? But John Landis Mason would disagree. So would the USDA. With the explosion in interest in home canning and the ever-present problem of botulism or simple spoilage, the difference between a regular-mouth quart and a faux-Mason jar may mean the difference between delicious pickles and a biohazard.

Photo: Pint jar of sweet pickles. Credit: Susan Lutz

When you hand people homemade marshmallows, they’re always dazzled. These are actual marshmallows, but with a lush, moist texture you never find in store-bought versions.

If you want your friends to keep thinking you’re a wizard, don’t tell them how simple it is. Basically marshmallow is a meringue made with gelatin instead of egg white, so it just takes longer — egg white cooks almost immediately, while gelatin has to stiffen for 12 hours or more in the refrigerator — but the ratio of dazzle to effort is enormous.

In the 18th and 19th century, confectioners extracted a gluey substance from the roots of marshmallow plants and used that where we use gelatin today. They also hedged their bets with egg white. In fact, some modern recipes add some egg white, I really can’t say why.

Limitless variations for flavored marshmallows

There’s one thing we can learn from the old-timers: You don’t have to flavor marshmallows with vanilla. They typically used orange blossom water, which does give a deliriously dainty and elegant effect. If I thought as seasonally as you’re supposed to these days, I’d have saved this recipe for June, because I imagine orange blossom marshmallows could be used in all sorts of romantic wedding-related ways.

You could also use mint or lemon extract. In fact any flavoring you want would work because this is a broad palette on which much can be painted. But the very best marshmallow flavor, in my opinion, is butterscotch. The effect of rich butterscotch flavor in a plush texture is overwhelming.

There are commercial butterscotch flavorings in restaurant supply stores, but I don’t like to rely entirely on them because when a dish contains only two ingredients, sugar and gelatin, the artificiality of artificial flavors becomes a bit noticeable. Instead, I replace the corn syrup in the marshmallow recipe with an English product called Lyle’s Golden Syrup which has been sold in tins resembling small paint cans since the 1880s. Unlike corn syrup, it’s made from sugar cane, but unlike molasses, it has a delicate browned-sugar flavor without the burnt and acid edge of molasses (which is of course perfectly appropriate in other contexts).

Use Golden Syrup and you’re already 85% of the way to butterscotch flavor. In fact, I understand that in England the company sells a butterscotch version of Golden Syrup that we should start importing right away. In the meantime, I like to punch the flavor up with a drop or two of butterscotch extract, but you don’t really have to.

Finding the perfect texture

The proportions of sugar, water, corn syrup and gelatin in this marshmallow recipe are pretty forgiving. You can find recipes with anything from 5 teaspoons to 7½ teaspoons gelatin to half a cup of water, and the proportions of sugar, corn syrup and water are also rather loose. If you use more liquid or less gelatin, your marshmallows won’t whip up as high but they will have a moister, more luscious texture. You may want to experiment with different proportions. I like a high medium-moist marshmallow, so I boil the syrup to the upper end of the soft ball stage, rather than the firm ball many recipes specify.

How forgiving are the proportions? I have made marshmallows with a syrup mixture that had so little liquid that not all the sugar dissolved. The corn syrup kept the mixture from “seizing up” into rock candy, but some of the sugar granules never dissolved. I found the effect pleasant, but maybe the world is not yet ready for crunchy-style marshmallows.

Basic Marshmallow Recipe

Makes 16 marshmallows

Ingredients

1 cup water, divided

2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin

½ cup light corn syrup

1½ cups sugar

¼ to ½ teaspoon vanilla or other flavoring

½ to ¾ cup confectioner’s sugar

Directions

1. Spray an 8-inch by 8-inch baking dish with non-stick spray.

2. Pour ½ cup water into the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Allow the gelatin to sit for 5 minutes, then set the mixer bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water. Leave it there without stirring until there is no longer a floating layer of undissolved gelatin, 15 -20 minutes.

3. Remove the mixer bowl from the saucepan and set aside until cool, 10 minutes or so. Return the mixer bowl to the mixer and whip the dissolved gelatin as if it were egg whites until it holds soft peaks, about 1 minute.

4. In a small saucepan, mix the remaining ½ cup water and ½ cup corn syrup with the sugar. Bring to the boil over high heat, reduce the heat to medium and place a lid on the saucepan for 3 minutes so that steam can wash any sugar crystals off the edge of the pan.

5. Remove the lid, raise the heat to high and insert a thermometer probe into the syrup. When it reaches 238 F, about 10 minutes from the start of cooking, pour the syrup into a 2-cup glass measuring cup, scraping as much as you can from the saucepan with a heat-resistant spatula.

6. Beat the hot syrup into the gelatin in 6 or 7 small batches, stopping the beaters when you add syrup avoid pouring any of it on the beaters themselves because they’ll waste syrup by whipping it onto the walls of the mixing bowl. Scrape all the syrup you can from the cup.

Two notes: Don’t be disturbed by a faint barnyard aroma, which will disappear when the gelatin cools. And put a paper towel on the counter when adding syrup, because there will be drippage.

7. When all the hot syrup is added, leave the mixer on high speed for 15 minutes. Beat in your chosen flavoring and scrape the marshmallow into the prepared baking dish. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

8. In the morning, sift ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar over the surface of the marshmallow. Use a table knife or spatula to loosen the sides, then overturn onto a plate and tap the bottom. You may have to tap quite insistently. When the square of marshmallow has dropped onto the plate, use a sharp knife, preferably with a blade 8 inches long, and cut in four parts and again at right angles to obtain 16 cubes of marshmallow. Dredge each marshmallow in confectioner’s sugar to prevent stickiness and arrange on a serving plate; or on wax paper in a sealable container. Will keep for at least 1 week.

Variations

• Orange Blossom Marshmallows: Replace the vanilla with orange blossom water.
• Butterscotch Marshmallows: Replace the corn syrup with Lyle’s Golden Syrup and optionally add a drop or two of butterscotch extract at the end.

 Homemade marshmallows dusted with confectioners’ sugar. Credit: StockFood

It’s the seeds.

The average number of seeds in a pomegranate ranges from about 600 to 700 to sometimes 1,000, give or take a couple hundred up or down depending on the pomegranate’s size. That makes pomegranate jelly the most time-consuming jelly in jellyland.

But it must be done. Pomegranate jelly is difficult to find in stores.

The ruby-red pulp that clings to each seed makes the juice that becomes the jelly. The seed is beige and sliver-shaped, like orzo. There’s a short way and a long way to get the juice. After making three batches, it’s confirmed: the short way makes a more jewel-toned jelly.

Recently, I made all this pomegranate jelly as an act of compassion for a 30-foot tall tree in a neighbor’s yard. It was so loaded with fruit I felt it needed my assistance. My neighbor filled three plastic bags, about 10 pounds each, with just the low-hanging fruit. It was after 5 p.m. when we decided to pick the fruit. We don’t get on ladders during cocktail hour.

A craving with staying power

Call them sentimental or hormonal reasons, but I can’t get through winter without pomegranate jelly.

Pomegranate jelly is in the story of my only pregnancy. Toward the end, in December 1990, my little body was carrying a big baby boy who would be two weeks late in mid-January. I was close to 40 years old and could barely walk. The doctor’s orders were to stop working and rest at home.

Dinner was always the same demand for my chef husband: dark meat from a roasted chicken, peas with butter on them, and the pomegranate jelly brought over by my sister-in-law. That pomegranate jelly stood in place of cranberry sauce, but it was milder, softer and with a lighter jewel-tone color. I had to have it. It’s the stuff of a weird pregnancy craving that has lasted 21 years and may never recede. It should be no coincidence that my college-age son loves pomegranates and pomegranate jelly.

The test of two methods

Which brings me to this season’s [free] neighborhood pomegranates and the jellies I got out of them. To start you need  8 cups of juice, which will strain out to 4 cups, which is what you need to make the jelly. I tried two techniques, the virtuous long way and the slumming quick way, with surprising results.

Pomegranate jelly. Credit: Elaine Corn

Juice prep, technique 1: Quarter pomegranates, open them while they are submerged in a big basin of water and work out the seeds with your fingers. The pith floats and is discarded while the seeds go into a soup pot. Here, they are lightly heated and gently crushed with a potato masher until the beige seeds are forced out of the pulp. The resulting mash is strained many times, first through a fine mesh steel strainer, then through the strainer lined with two layers of cheesecloth, then through four layers of cheesecloth, and finally through a coffee filter. This is to clarify the juice of sediment. By the time the coffee filter is used, not much will pass through it. This sediment is tossed. This technique took 4 hours, gave me the necessary 8 cups juice, and resulted in a light jewel-toned pomegranate jelly.

Juice prep, technique 2: Halve pomegranates. Use an electric citrus reamer to juice the pomegranates until you have 8 cups juice. (Critics say this technique allows the bitter flavor of pith to enter the juice; sorry, this does not happen.) As you ream, save the seed pulp that clogs the machine in a pot; heat on low while gently pressing any excess pulp off the seeds with a potato masher. Strain the seed pulp, discard what’s left in the strainer, and add the strained seed juice to the reamed juice. Now strain all the juice through a fine mesh steel strainer, then through the strainer lined with two layers of cheesecloth, then through four layers of cheesecloth, and finally through a coffee filter. By the time the coffee filter is used, not much will pass through it. This technique took about 1½ hours and resulted in a clear, deeply ruby jewel-toned jelly.

Equipment

4 sterilized pint jars*

Water bath kettle with lid

Sterilized rings and screw caps

To make the jelly:

1 pouch Certo/SureJell pectin

4 cups strained, clarified pomegranate juice (from about 10 pounds pomegranates), see juicing techniques, above

⅓ cup strained fresh lemon juice

7 cups sugar

Directions

1. Snip off top of Certo pouch and hold upright in a glass convenient to the stove. Have water-bath kettle boiling. Add empty pint jars to the boiling water until needed; this will sterilize them. You’ll retrieve them later with tongs.

2. In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat the pomegranate juice on medium. Wait for a simmer. Now, add the lemon juice and sugar.

3. With heat still on medium, very slowly bring the pomegranate juice to a boil that can’t be stirred down.

4. Add Certo, pressing it all out of pouch. Boil 1 minute. (Set a timer!)

5. Off heat, use a large spoon to skim all scum from surface.

6. Ladle hot jelly into hot jars, top with caps and screw bands. Only hand-tighten, for best seal.

7. Transfer jars to the boiling water-bath. Process, covered, for 12 minutes.

8. Use pot-holder gloves that reach mid-arm. Using tongs, carefully remove jelly jars and set on a rack to cool. Every time you hear the pop of a seal, you’ll smile.

* For gifts, use 8 half-pint jars and process for 5 minutes.

Seed-laden pomegranate ready for jelly. Credit: StockFood

It’s spring in Southern California, and our backyard fruit trees have run riot. Golden yellow loquats the size of my child’s fist hang heavily from two trees, and oranges left over from the winter crop spectacularly cover a 30-foot tree shading my daughter’s playhouse. Our yard looks like a postcard trumpeting the glories of Los Angeles suburbia, circa 1923.

But as with any paradise there’s a dark side. This year, the dark side comes from the loquats. I don’t know what to do with them.

There are so many loquats that our yard has become a hazard. Fully-ripe loquats drop from our trees every five minutes, and as my daughters play in the yard, they grind the soft yellow orbs messily into the lawn and walkway. Still more are up there, some as high as 40 feet, way beyond the reach of our ladder and picking tool. They’ve become a feast for the flocks of squawking, screaming wild parrots in our neighborhood.

These are another holdover from the 1920’s “California is Paradise” meme. Some of the  wild parrots are said to be runaways from the estate of Lucky Baldwin, and the creatures tear the loquats to bits, scattering the seeds and skins across our back yard to mix with the rotting ones.

We have two loquat trees that dominate our backyard, each with slightly different variety of fruit. When we first moved to this house, I had no idea what loquats were and wasn’t even sure they were edible. For several weeks we raked them into huge messy piles and shoved them into the recycling bin. But I couldn’t stand to see this bounty left to rot, so I started asking questions about this small, fleshy yellow fruit. I discovered that loquats are not only edible, they’re downright delicious. My youngest daughter became obsessed with loquats when she was just a year old and ate her weight in loquats that first season.

Don’t sweat the seeds

Over the past few years, I have turned our loquats into loquat cobbler, loquat butter and loquat leather, with varying degrees of success. The biggest problem with loquats is their incredible seed-to-flesh ratio. Each loquat contains one to six large seeds, which means that you get almost as much seed as you do edible flesh in each loquat.

When I first starting researching loquats, I’d read that the seeds were poisonous. Filled with arsenic, and possibly cyanide. The websites were not clear. But like any paranoid mother, I worried that my children might eat them and fall into a temporary coma, just like an unnamed child I’d read about online. Although we’d been eating loquats for several years without incident, I decided to put my fears to rest once and for all by checking with an expert.

I put in a call to professor Jules Janick, director of the Indiana Center for New Crops and Plant Products at Purdue University. He’s not only the co-editor of “The Encyclopedia of Fruits and Nuts,” he is also a kind and understanding voice of reason. Janick told me that loquat seeds are indeed toxic, but then so are the seeds of apples and pears. To put things into perspective, Janick said, “If you ate 3 pounds of them, then it might be a problem.” He also reminded me that the bitterness of the seeds would stop someone from eating them pretty quickly. I realized that my daughter was at far greater risk for choking on a loquat seed than being poisoned by its chemical components.

Backyard loquat adventure

With this in mind, on an April afternoon, I took my loquat-loving youngest daughter to the back yard to begin Loquat Harvest 2013. We planned to fill my daughter’s toy wagon with enough fruit to make loquat leather, but we were quickly distracted by the fun of the collection process. We examined huge spider webs woven between the tree’s broad leaves. We ducked our heads from a torrent of loquat hail that rained down on us as I used our fruit picker to reach an especially high cluster of fruit. But we stopped in our tracks when we discovered a tiny hummingbird’s nest attached to a small wavering branch of our loquat tree. All thoughts of loquat leather disappeared and we marveled at this tiny treasure.

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Loquats ripening on the tree in our back yard. Credit: Susan Lutz

Our loquat tree was not only a source of food for humans and birds alike, it was a home. Our loquat trees now feel like an integral part of our own home, one that we happily share with our feathered friends.

I’m still experimenting with new ways to use the backyard bounty, without creating more work than necessary. The simplest approach is to just eat the fruit straight from the tree, spitting out the seeds, of course. But that’s a LOT of loquats to eat.

Our future is sure to be full of new loquat-laced dishes including loquat jelly, loquat chutney and loquat-chicken tagine. Maybe even a batch of loquat ice cream. But even as my family members stuff themselves with loquats, I think that the bounty of Southern California may simply be too much to keep up with.

I may have to ignore much of the fruit of the loquat this year.

And the real beneficiaries, the screaming, squawking, fat and happy parrots.

Loquat-Apple Leather

Ingredients

8 cups seeded loquat halves (approximately 9 to 10 cups of whole, ripe fruit depending on size)

2 cups applesauce (store-bought is fine)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Wash loquats and remove any blemishes and remaining brown bits from stem and blossom ends. Be sure to use ripe loquats, which are softer, sweeter and less acidic than unripe loquats.

2. Cut loquats in half. Scoop out the seeds and white membrane inside the pulpy yellow flesh. Don’t bother to peel them.

3. Make two batches of loquat-apple purée by adding 4 cups of loquat halves, 1 cup of applesauce and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon into blender or food processor. Process until smooth. (The blender does a slightly better job on breaking down the peels than the food processor, but either will work.) Repeat with second half of ingredients.

4. Place a solid tray liner, usually called a fruit roll sheet or non-stick dehydrator sheet, on top of your dehydrator tray.

5. Spread a layer of loquat-apple purée, about ¼-inch thick, onto the solid tray liner. The fruit leather will have a more uniform thickness if you spread the puree slightly thicker around the edges. Be sure to follow instructions for your dehydrator. Some suggest brushing the tray with a thin layer of vegetable oil to the tray liner before adding fruit purée.

6. Place the tray (or multiple trays if you have them) into the dehydrator and dehydrate at 135 F for 4 to 8 hours, until the fruit leather is translucent and can be easily peeled from the tray without falling apart. It may still feel a bit sticky to the touch, especially in the middle.

7. Cut into strips and roll.  Keep in a closed container or bag until ready to eat.

Picking loquats. Credit: Susan Lutz

Last night, it was cauliflower curry on a bed of leeks while my husband grilled his own slab of meat. The night before I ate solo — and downed an enormous bag of kale chips (please don’t tell him) flavored with cashew dust and too much fake cheese. And tonight? I’m sticking to my dietitian’s advice to shut down the digestive track by 7 p.m.-ish and calling my late lunch “lupper.”

But I’ve been known to cheat.

In fact, cheating is what I’m all about — cheating my body into a metabolic state that puts up its dukes to fight cancer, lest some imperfect genes win the battle. And I cheat on my plan every once in a while too, because perfection, as a rule, stinks. You see I’ve had cancer twice — a rare ovarian — and other than surgery, the doctors told me there was nothing they could do. The good news: It’s slow growing. The bad news:  it’ll likely come back.

Devouring science, changing diet

So for seven years now, since the recurrence, I’ve been taking my health into my own hands, devouring the science and changing what I eat. And I’m still clean. Sure, I understand that association doesn’t prove cause. Maybe I’d still be cancer-free had I clung to my late-night rituals involving vanilla ice cream. But look at the upside: I feel great, am rarely sick and have a powerful sense of control over my body. And the best part of adopting an anti-cancer approach to eating? Maybe I’m actually keeping cancer cells at bay.

The evidence for diet’s impact on cancer keeps getting stronger: 3 to 4 million cases of the disease per year could be prevented by changes in food consumption and exercise, according to an international team of scientists who study the many studies on how nutrition impacts cancer and the many genes that affect it.

How many existing cancerous cells could be stopped from growing, spreading and taking another life by changing our diet? That’s a rhetorical question, I realize, one there’s not yet enough evidence for scientists to answer. Nor may there ever be — at least not in our lifetimes. But they do know that certain dietary factors can cause cancer cells to proliferate. This just out: A review of the scientific literature published this summer identifies 40-plus elements in plants that activate metastasis-suppressing genes. 

Beating cancer: Foods to avoid

The bottom line is that we should all be eschewing red and processed meat and emphasizing a diet based on non-starchy plants, says that esteemed panel of scientists, who, through the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research, have published more than a thousand pages of reports.

From what they and others tell us, however, it’s much more complex than picking foods from the earth. When it comes to eating to beat cancer, some vegetables are better than others, for example; raw is often good, but not always; and you can overdose on many acceptable choices, including my Indonesian tempeh wraps and cannellini humus.  We’re all different in terms of our genes, how our bodies metabolize food and drugs and how our cells react.

But some general patterns about nutrition’s impact on cancer are emerging, and while the evidence may not be definitive on all counts, scientists are providing enough fodder for all of us to rethink what we put on our plates.   

Eating to beat cancer: Vegetables that cheat the beast

If you were to ask me for three simple changes you could make this month to boost your chances of fighting the beast, here’s what I’d suggest:

1. Embrace alliums (onions, garlic, leeks), crucifers (broccoli, Brussels sprouts and other members of the cabbage family) and dark, leafy greens. Studies show they top the list of cancer-fighting veggies, assuming they’re not overcooked. Both groups contain smelly sulfur compounds that protect against carcinogens and lead cancer cells down the path to suicide. Crucifers also seem to protect against estrogen, one of many hormones that signal cancer cells to grow.

2. Get your blood sugar under control. That means watching your intake of simple sugars (including fruits) and the more complex ones called carbs — potatoes, breads, pastas and grains, even whole ones. All increase your blood sugar; in response, your pancreas pours out insulin — another hormone that can spur cancer growth. By focusing on non-starchy veggies, fiber, good proteins and a small portion of healthy fats, you’ll help regulate your blood sugar.

3. Cook with spices, herbs and verve. “It’s well known that herbs and spices have a variety of anti-cancer benefits,” says Dr. Gary G. Meadows, who did the study identifying the plant elements that affect metastasis-suppressing genes. Because they work in different ways, “it’s important to eat a variety of spices and herbs, both fresh and dried, to maximize the anti-cancer activities that they have,”  Meadows says.

Turn your kitchen into a shrine to Earth’s diversity. Make Indian, Thai, Italian feasts. Liven up your meals with basil, rosemary, parsley, mint, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, turmeric (which you should mix with black pepper and heat in a dab of olive oil to ensure absorption.)  While it’s not always the easiest option, cooking at home is the best way to control your destiny.

Broccoli puttanesca, anyone?  Steam the greens lightly — and pass me the cooking water!

Photo: Harriet Sugar Miller. Credit: Holly Botner