A Ruthenian Christmas: A kielbasa story in words and pictures

First of all, let me say that not every post on TrueGrub is about healthful food. Today we're going to talk about some decidedly high-fat, high-sodium stuff that happens to be a traditional holiday favorite in my family.

Second of all, let me say that I'm not Ruthenian. (We'll get to the subject of Ruthenia in a moment.) But my wife's family is Ruthenian, and I'm the cook in my household, so I've had the duty and privilege of preparing some traditional Ruthenian dishes for the holidays.

Now, about Ruthenia... Ruthenia is a place. Or, rather, Ruthenia was a place. Scholars -- and members of my wife's extended family -- don't agree on exactly where it was, but it was clearly somewhere in Eastern Europe. Wikipedia describes it better than I could.

Suffice it to say that my in-laws say their ancestry is Ruthenian, and their holiday tradition includes kielabasa. Kielbasa with brown sauerkraut, to be precise, which I prepared yesterday.

It began with a visit to the Union Pork Store in Union, NJ last weekend. These two photos show just a fraction of the huge assortment of sausages and other products offered there.

 

 

 

I purchased three links of kielbasa, roughly five pounds total. I'm not a kielbasa expert, but I know there's more than one kind, and I know that I usually buy the kind known as krajana, which is coarse-ground. Another customer, who appeared to be an elderly Eastern European lady, tried to talk me into the fine-ground version, which, if I understood her correctly, is called mielona. I was almost persuaded, but in the end I stuck with the familiar krajana.

 

The first thing I did when I got home was to seal the kielbasa tightly in a large plastic bag. If this step isn't taken, the refrigerator and everything in it will reek of garlic!

 

 

 

On Christmas Eve, I liberated the kielbasa from its plastic prison...

 

 

 

...and assembled the other two ingredients for my dish: sauerkraut and slab bacon. The sauerkraut was a couple of two-pound bags or ordinary kraut from the refrigerated section of my local supermarket. The bacon came from the Union Pork Store. The variety and quantity of bacon aren't critical. I had about a third of a pound.

 

I diced the bacon...

 

 

 

...and cooked it in a nonstick pan until slightly crispy.

 

 

 

Then I drained some, but not all of the grease. I drained as much liquid as possible from the sauerkraut and added the kraut to the pan. I cooked it for several minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden. This combination of smoked pork and light caramelization produces the "brown sauerkraut" that's key to the dish.

 

 

 

Next, I sliced the kielbasa. I like to cut half-inch slices on the bias, which provides plenty of surface area to encourage mingling of the juices from the kielbasa and the kraut. You can see the coarse texture that characterizes krajana kielbasa.

 

 

 

Then it was just a matter of combining the brown sauerkraut and the kielbasa slices in a couple of aluminum baking pans.

 

At that point, since I wasn't planning to serve the kielbasa until the next day, I stored the pans in the refrigerator. On Christmas Day, I brought them to my sister-in-law's house (once again safely wrapped in a large plastic bag). She heated the pans in a 350-degree oven for about an hour.

The kielabasa was just one part of a multiethnic holiday meal that included mushroom soup, Italian-style antipasto, ham, pierogies, green beans, carrots and babka. The feast was enjoyed by all, Ruthenians and non-Ruthenians alike.

Happy holidays and good eating!

 

Hanover frozen rice and beans

Can it be? I believe I've found a food product that's tasty, inexpensive, nutritious and convenient.

My local Shoprite stocks Hanover brand frozen Brown Rice, Black Beans, Peppers & Onions in a steam-in-bag.

The ingredients list is just what the name of the product implies: cooked brown rice (water, brown rice), cooked black beans, green and red peppers, onions.

The 10-ounce bag contains two servings, each of which has 160 calories, 1 gram of fat, no saturated fat, 45 mg of sodium, 8 grams of dietary fiber, and one gram of sugar.

Just throw the bag in the microwave, and it's ready in four minutes. With a little salt and pepper, it's quite tasty.

It usually costs about $1.50. This combination of low cost, low fat, low sodium, high fiber, easy preparation and decent flavor is hard to beat!

The only thing I wonder about is whether some of the nutritional benefits of brown rice and black beans are lost when they're pre-cooked and frozen. This Askville post suggests that rice's nutritional qualities do suffer from pre-cooking. This post, on the other hand, suggests that they don't. And here's a video comparing cooked vs. dried beans, although it focuses on canned beans, not frozen. None of these sources seems authoritative.

Readers, if you have information about the nutritional characteristics of pre-cooked frozen rice or beans, please comment.

Skier's sustenance

Greetings from Winter Park, CO, where I'm fortunate to be enjoying a few days of skiing. Needless to say, exercising outdoors when the temperature is 4 degrees can work up an appetite. Also needless to say, ski areas' on-mountain restaurants aren't renowned for the quality of their food. Today's lunch was a pleasant exception.

I grabbed a quick meal at the Club Car restaurant at Winter Park Resort's Mary Jane base area. I chose an item called "The Brat." According to the menu, the bratwurst is locally made and nitrate-free. It was served with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and a piece of baguette.

The brat wasn't especially salty or garlicky. If I'm not mistaken, the dominant spice was cloves. Really, the sauerkraut was the star of the show. It also was not too salty. It was garnished with paprika, which I found both unusual and delicious. The mashed potatoes and bread weren't anything special, but provided much-needed calories on a ski day.

The larger question is how to find decent food when skiing. Often, the first step is to avoid the cafeteria. Although far from fancy, the Club Car is a table-service restaurant. The prices are higher than in the cafeteria, but not by much. The brat was $11.95. An ice tea set me back another $3.25. With tax and tip, the whole meal cost about $19. Not cheap, but at the same resort, a burger, fries and soda at the cafeteria can cost $17, and the quality is awful.

There's certainly good food, even gourmet food, to be found at ski resorts, but my focus is on something that can be consumed quickly so I can get back on the slopes, for under $20. In that category, the brat hits the spot.

Cheese at 33,000 feet

On a recent flight from Phoenix to Newark, I didn't expect delicious food, and I didn't expect free food, but I also didn't expect cheese food!

The menu offered a small selection of snack boxes. I chose the "CaféSnack," which was supposed to include Swiss and Gouda cheese.

When the food arrived, I discovered that it actually included Glacier Ridge Farms brand "Gouda style pasteurized process cheese food, gouda-type flavor" and "Swiss style pasteurized process cheese food, swiss-type flavor."

So this was something similar to cheese, but with a few more adjectives -- and a few more ingredients. In addition to cheese, each package contained water, sodium phosphate, calcium proprionate and salt.

It didn't taste awful, but I would have preferred just plain cheese. Cheese isn't terribly perishable, but perhaps there's a good reason it's not practical to serve on a commercial flight. I decided I'd try to find out.

According to Cheese Market News, (yep, no kidding!), Glacier Ridge Farms is the brand name for a line of products manufactured by Dairyfood USA of Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Their website has a helpful "contact us" form, where I submitted this question:
Hi. I recently ordered a CafeSnack snack box on a US Airways flight, which included Glacier Ridge Farms Gouda style and Swiss style pasteurized process cheese food. These tasted pretty good, but I noticed from the name and ingredients that they're not just cheese. I'd appreciate any information you can share about why US Airways offers this product rather than regular cheese.

The "contact us" form on the US Airways website was a little more challenging to use: I had to divulge my phone number, address and flight details. Still, I was able to submit a similar question there.

If I get a reply from Dairyfood or US Airways, I'll be sure to update this post.

Sad About Slaw: Beware the Deli Counter

I thought I had found a food product that was affordable, tasty and healthful. My local Shoprite's deli counter offers a salad they call "vinegar and oil cole slaw." It's chock full of shredded cabbage and carrots, and while it's clearly not low-fat, its oil-and-vinegar dressing seems lighter than that of mayonnaise-based slaw. I figured it might be high in sodium, but I assumed it was otherwise a good nutritional choice.

Last month, I decided to find out what this product is really made of. The adhesive label printed at the deli counter gave the name "Blue Ridge Vinegar & Oil Slaw." A Google search led to several online grocery sites offering Blue Ridge's conventional mayonnaise slaw, some of which listed the ingredients. But I had no luck finding the ingredients for the vinegar and oil version.

Eventually, I used the "Contact Us" page at shoprite.com to email an inquiry about the product's ingredients and nutrition facts. To Shoprite's credit, a Customer Satisfaction Manager (yep, that's his title!) replied within a few days. Here's the response in its entirety, except that I've omitted the manager's name and contact information to preserve his privacy.

Good Morning Mr. Steve,
The Blue Ridge vinegar and oil coleslaw ingredients are cabbage, high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, carrots, red bell peppers, vinegar, salt, water, sodium erthorbate, potassium sorbata (as a perservative), sodium benzoate (as a persevative), modified food starch (corn), parsley, calcium disodium EDTA. contains: soy.

There are a few typos, but the message is clear. More corn syrup than carrots or peppers. And five chemical additives, three of which are sodium compounds, as well as salt itself. Since the reply didn't include nutrition facts, I'm still in the dark about the precise sodium content, but it's undoubtedly high.

I don't think I'll be buying this product in the future. What I thought was a wholesome vegetable salad is more like a chemical stew.

The larger point is that the deli counter is a labeling-free zone. Most supermarket products include detailed labels with ingredients and nutrition facts in accordance with FDA guidelines. The deli counter is an exception. Unless you do some digging, you don't know what's in the coldcuts, salads and other products offered there. Buyer beware!

Fall colors

At this time of year, it's not only leaves that display beautiful colors. Some amazing hues can be found in the produce aisle, as well.

One example is these orange-and-green acorn squashes, purchased from Whole Foods.

I haven't cooked them yet. I don't expect the preparation or flavor will differ from more ordinary-looking acorn squash, but they're certainly pleasant to look at.

A second example is purple -- yes, purple! -- sweet potatoes. These also came from Whole Foods and were grown in California. In this photo, I've cut the end off one of them, so you can see that the flesh inside is purple, just like the skin.

A sign in the store suggested boiling or steaming to preserve the color, but I went ahead and baked them as I usually do with sweet potatoes: about 45 minutes in a toaster oven at 400 degrees. They were still quite purple after cooking, as you can see from this one that's been baked and split lengthwise.

The flavor was like that of orange sweet potatoes, with one odd difference: the sweetness wasn't uniform throughout each potato. I noticed one end of my potato was very sweet, while the other end was only moderately sweet, with more of a starchy flavor. My wife found the same was true of hers.

One tip for handling these sweet potatoes: they exude a deep red-purple juice when cut while raw, almost like a beet. Even after baking, some juice of the same color dripped when they were cut open. I imagine the juice could stain fabric if you're not careful. On skin or a cutting board, though, it rinsed away with no fuss.

Interestingly, both these beautiful produce items didn't come with premium prices. Each was around $1.50 per pound, a good deal considering they were a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.

Whole wheat pasta: the cardboard conundrum

"It tastes like cardboard." That was my lovely wife's assessment the last time I served whole wheat pasta. My teenage son didn't like it any better, and, I must confess, I wasn't crazy about it myself.

I chose penne rigate of a reputable brand -- DeCecco, whose refined-flour pasta is consistently excellent -- and carefully followed the package directions. Yet I found the results unappetizing. The flavor was decidedly bitter. The texture was strangely crumbly: the pasta disintegrated into small, faintly slippery morsels when chewed. With some tomato sauce, I was able to choke it down, but I really didn't enjoy it. I had better luck using it as a base for a flavorful dish of sautéed chicken thighs with peppers and onions, but it still wasn't nearly as good as conventional pasta.

Here's the strange thing: I've had whole wheat pasta in a couple of different restaurants, and it tasted better than what I made at home. Now I think I know why. I looked closely at another brand of whole grain pasta, Barilla, in the supermarket recently. The words "Whole Grain" appear on the front of the box in giant letters. Also in fairly large type, it states "EXCELLENT SOURCE OF FIBER." It's much smaller text that admits "MADE WITH 51% WHOLE WHEAT." That's in contrast to the DeCecco product, which contains only whole semolina and some vitamins and minerals. I'm guessing that the products I enjoyed in the restaurants were not 100% whole wheat.

I wonder, by the way, why DeCecco fortifies its whole grain pasta with added nutrients. Shouldn't that be unnecessary when the flour is unrefined?

I also wondered, of course, what definition of "whole grain" allows Barilla to label its product as whole grain pasta. I found some sources (such as this one) stating that the USDA's definition is -- no surprise -- at least 51%.

I'd really like to enjoy whole wheat pasta. And I'd really like it to be 100% whole wheat. Readers, if you know a brand, cooking technique or recipe that makes whole wheat pasta delicious, please comment. I want to eat something that's good for me -- and tastes better than the cardboard box it came in.

Daikon

It's disappointing how few of the world's edible plants and animals make up most people's diets, so when the chance comes along to try something new, I usually take it. Although I've eaten daikon before, I never bought it or prepared it myself until now.

It's the long white sticks on my crudité platter shown in the photo, which I served with guacamole and hummus for dipping. Wikipedia has a photo of whole daikon, but mine wasn't as pretty as theirs. The greens had been removed, and the skin was rough-textured with some brownish coloration in areas. It looked a lot like a parsnip, or like a carrot if carrots were off-white. It was a bargain at $1.29 per pound, less than a dollar for a large daikon.

I peeled it and cut it into strips suitable for dipping. Daikon is sometimes known as daikon radish or Chinese radish, and I found the taste and texture very similar to a "regular" radish: crunchy, a bit watery, and providing a moderate sensation of heat on the tongue. My wife compared the flavor to celery; however, it lacks any stringiness.

Wikipedia says daikon is low in calories, and higher in vitamin C than regular radishes. I suspect the red skin of regular radishes harbors some antioxidants that aren't found in daikon, but I'm just guessing about that. Readers, please weigh in if you know. In any case, daikon is probably a more healthful choice than a lot of things I eat. It wasn't the most delicious thing I ever had, but I would try it again.

The strip mall trifecta

There are three desirable characteristics of food: good flavor, low cost and good nutrition. It's rare to find one dish that offers all of these.

My hopes for good eating were particularly low yesterday afternoon. I was on the road and didn't have a chance to get lunch until after 3:00. In an unfamiliar town and too hungry to be choosy, I pulled into a strip mall and perused the storefronts. I settled on Frank's Trattoria, which looked like any other pizza joint, with a counter, a few tables, and pizza by the slice. I assumed I'd wolf down a couple of pieces of pizza and be on my way.

But then I noticed a chalkboard on which a single lunch special was offered: grilled salmon with sautéed vegetables. Amazingly, this meal was priced at only $7.50. When the food arrived, the portion was huge, and it tasted great! Furthermore, it was loaded with sautéed fresh vegetables: broccoli, spinach, carrots, peppers, mushrooms onions and garlic. It wasn't greasy or particularly salty, just flavorful and satisfying.

So although it's unusual to find taste, affordability and healthful ingredients all together, sometimes good meals come from unexpected places. Three cheers for the strip mall trifecta!

Is Boston Market more healthful than other fast food chains?

I was away from home at dinnertime today, and although I'm not usually a fan of chain restaurants, I gave in to a craving for Boston Market. I don't think of Boston Market's food as healthful, but I always figured it was a bit less unhealthful than "traditional" fast food like McDonalds or KFC. After finishing a fatty, salty meal, though, I was wondering whether that's true. I decided to look up the nutrition facts for what I had just eaten.

Boston Market provides access to an online nutrition calculator, which is actually pretty slick. I entered my entrée (Rotisserie Chicken - Three Piece Dark, which automatically added cornbread to my meal and sides (Garlic Dill New Potatoes and Garlicky Lemon Spinach). The calculator generated this nutrition facts report:


The calorie count was actually less than I expected. I can certainly handle 760 calories at dinnertime, unless I've had an unusually large breakfast and lunch.

The fat and saturated fat numbers are pretty high, but (I'm embarrassed to say) no higher than some of the dinners I cook at home. The cholesterol, at 108% of daily value, is a bit alarming. The chicken accounts for 290mg of the cholesterol, about double what USDA's Food-A-Pedia estimates for a similar quantity of roasted dark-meat chicken.

It's no surprise that the meal included nearly a day's worth of sodium. The 15 grams of sugar did come as a surprise. The only thing that tasted slightly sweet was the cornbread, which turns out to contribute 13 of those 15 grams.

On the positive side, the nutrition facts significant amounts of vitamins and minerals, as well as 6 grams of fiber. These nutrients mostly came from the two side dishes. However, I'm skeptical whether the stated amounts of these nutrients really survived processing and cooking. Also, I noticed vitamin A palmitate in the ingredient list, so not all of the vitamin A is from the actual vegetables.

Speaking of the ingredients, I was going to count how many there are, but I actually found it too difficult. Many of them have lists of sub-ingredients, some of which overlap. Suffice it to say there were more than 20 ingredients in my meal, and they included such delights as modified cornstarch and mono and diglycerides. It's never a good sign when Google's spell-checker doesn't believe something you ate is a word.

One definite benefit of this dinner: between the Garlic Dill New Potatoes and the Garlicky Lemon Spinach, I won't have to worry about vampires tonight!

Bagged salad: good or evil? Readers, please comment.

I consider lettuce a Good Thing to Eat, nutritionally speaking. Not iceberg lettuce, of course, but varieties with a good supply of vitamin A and other nutrients. So I try to keep some in the fridge at all times. Since I don't want the inconvenience of washing and cutting lettuce to discourage me from making a salad, I often buy pre-washed, bagged salad from the supermarket. I have some misgivings about bagged salad, although I'm not sure why. Here are some of the pros and cons as I see them. I hope readers will weigh in.

Cost
This is a no-brainer in favor of head lettuce. At Shoprite, Whole Foods and A&P stores in suburban New Jersey and New York, bagged salad generally costs between $2.50 and $3.99 for a 5- to 10-ounce bag, or $5.99 to $6.99 for an 11- to 16-ounce clamshell. That works out to somewhere between $5.99 and $12.67 per pound. Not surprisingly, the nutritious, tasty varieties I prefer tend to be at the high end of the price-per-pound range. For comparison, today I bought two whole heads of lettuce, 0.91 pounds of red leaf at $1.79/lb. and 0.49 pounds of romaine at $1.29/lb. That's well over a pound of lettuce for a total of $2.36. Even after discarding the cores and a few outer leaves, it works out to about $2.00 per pound.

Convenience
In this category, bagged salad wins hands-down. Just open the bag and throw the lettuce in a bowl. Whole lettuce needs to be washed and cut. Today, I pre-washed my lettuce so I won't be discouraged from making a salad on another day when I have less time or motivation. I separated the leaves, swished them around in a bowl of cold water (two batches, each rinsed twice), and dried them in my salad spinner (two batches). The cleaned leaves went into a gallon-size zipper bag with a dry paper towel. The process took about 10 minutes. Although sometimes I cut the leaves into bite-size pieces before bagging, I didn't do that today, so I'll have to spend another few minutes on that task when I'm ready to make a salad. Not the end of the world, but I really don't relish spending 10 minutes once or twice a week processing lettuce.

Shelf life
This topic confuses me a bit. I always assumed that bagged salad goes bad faster than whole lettuce, even whole lettuce that has been washed and cut at home. And often it does, but not always. I've seen bagged salad become wilted and slimy within a day of opening, yet I've also seen it last for a week after opening, even beyond it's "best by" date. Whole lettuce that I've washed and cut generally stays fresh for a week. Interestingly, although it eventually loses its crispness and turns brown, it doesn't go bad in the same gross, slimy way the bagged salad does. I guess head lettuce is the winner in this category, but the results aren't entirely clear.

Quality and variety
One advantage of bagged salad is that you can get a mixture of many types of lettuce. Some of the spring mix products are a delightful blend of several kinds of baby lettuce, baby spinach and herbs. Some products are available with shredded carrots and cabbage mixed in. Bagged salad makes it easy to get a variety of high-nutrient, tasty greens in one package.

Vague qualms
So what worries me about bagged salad? I sometimes wonder if manufacturers are taking the lettuce that's about to go bad, trimming it, and packaging what's left as bagged salad. If it's true, is it a good thing or a bad thing? It's good if it prevents waste, but not so good if I'm getting a product that's past its peak of flavor and nutrition. Then there's the plastic packaging that ends up in the waste stream, or if we're lucky, gets recycled. And there's a nagging sense that I'm taking a shortcut instead of preparing fresh food from scratch. But is that wrong if it means I eat more and better lettuce?

What do you think?
I see both pros and cons to bagged salad. I don't know much about how it's grown, shipped and processed. And I don't know how it compares to head lettuce in terms of nutrition, pesticides, risk of contamination, or the conditions for farm and processing workers. I'd love to hear from readers.

Thanks for the hanger steak!

To the nice lady who took the wrong cart in Whole Foods:

I wasn't really paying attention when you approached me in the supermarket the other day. In fact, I had my head halfway inside the dairy case, looking for a good deal on yogurt. But I do recall you mentioned that you had accidentally taken someone else's cart, you thought it might have been mine, and you were wondering whether I now had yours. I also recall looking inside my cart, recognizing the contents, and saying I couldn't help you. Then another shopper mentioned he had heard something about a missing cart on the other side of the store, and you went off to investigate. I thought that was the end of the story.

It was two days later when I decided to grill the salmon burgers I had purchased. I pulled the package, wrapped in brown butcher paper, out of the fridge and was starting to tear it open when I noticed something odd on the label. Something about a hanger. Certainly nothing about salmon. Upon closer inspection, what I had was nearly one pound of hanger steak. I guess you had placed something in my cart after all, because I have never bought hanger steak in my life.

With the grill already heating and no backup plan for dinner, I decided to cook the steak. Although I have plenty of experience grilling steak and other foods, I was a little nervous, because I had heard that hanger steak can be chewy if not prepared properly. I've mostly had it as fajitas or in high-end restaurants, where it benefited from marination and the high heat of a professional kitchen. This being a last-minute dinner, I had no time to marinate, and my gas grill gets hot, but not that hot.

A few minutes of Internet research suggested that as long as I used the highest heat I could and cooked the meat to medium rare -- no more and no less -- all would be well. I also found some helpful instructions for removing the gristle that ran the length of the steak: simply cut the steak into two smaller ones.

So I preheated the grill and rubbed the meat with olive oil, salt, pepper and dried oregano. I threw the meat on the grill and left all three burners on high. After about five minutes, I turned the meat, turned the center burner off, and after a few minutes more, started checking with a meat thermometer. I was looking for a temperature of around 130 degrees, but after getting readings anywhere from 125 to over 140 in different areas, I pulled it off the grill rather than risk overcooking. I let it rest for about five minutes and then, following another online tip to promote tenderness, sliced it thinly against the grain.

Once I started slicing, I could see that I should have left it on the heat a few minutes longer. The thinnest parts were rare to medium rare, and the thickest parts were very rare. It was easy to salvage the situation by not leaving the thickest part unsliced and throwing it back on the grill for about three more minutes.

Success! The meat wasn't tough, it was very juicy, and the flavor was intense and delicious. I think I'll start buying this cut sometimes.

So thanks for the hanger steak. And I hope you like salmon burgers!