Today I am sharing the results of an experiment I recently did while I had access to a trial Sous Vide Supreme unit.

To the point, I wanted to see what happened when I used this hot water bath for making bread, something that would not take advantage of quite a few aspects of oven baking.

Some of those are:

• dry heat of the oven evaporating moisture from the surface of the dough which leads to gradual drying of dough surface but also, initially, cooling of the dough surface by evaporative cooling
• the slow raising of temperature as is requested in my original recipe (put dough in cold oven then turn onto 400, allowing for final proof/loft in the oven which gives excellent bread)
• the creation of a temperature differential between the surface of the bread (crust zone) and the interior
• the creation of a brown crust due to the Maillard Reaction (where high temperatures cause intermolecular bonding between proteins and sugars and gives rise to the browning), absent in sous vide cooking

This is not the first time that I have played with this machine, I wrote previously about Sous Vide here – St. Patricks day brisket – sous vide style. That brisket was simply amazing! Sous vide cooking is excellent for applications where long slow cooking or really finicky temperature regulation is needed (fish, rare meat preps, etc).

Just as a reminder, sous vide means “under vacuum” and when people refer to this method they usually mean the use of vacuum and hot water bath cooking.

To do this experiment, I used a recipe that I have used many many times before from the Joy of Cooking and specifically the Whole Wheat bread Plus recipe found on page 559 of the 1997 edition.

JoC Whole Wheat Bread Plus

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 2 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1/2 cup sugar (optional)
• 4 cups unbleached white flour
• 4 cups whole wheat flour

Directions:
Set the sous vide bath temperature to 190 F (if you set it a bit higher, let it get there, and then set temperature to final desired temperature you may have better results). This is the temperature mentioned by bakers as the target finished internal temperature.

Add yeast and sugar to 1/2 cup warm water, allow to rise 10 minutes. If it doesnt get foamy and smell yeasty, do not go forward with this recipe until you get fresh yeast.

After 10 minutes, add everything but the flour and beat until incorporated.

Add 4 cups unbleached white flour and incorporate.

Add 4 cups whole wheat flour and incorporate. At this point you will be kneading the flour into the dough. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth.

Rise in a warm place for 90 minutes (doubled) just once.

Bunch down dough and then form smallish baguette shaped loaves and then proceed with experimental part of this recipe, below.

Put dough into sous vide bag.

Seal bag and pull a vacuum.

Put into sous vide machine and leave for about 1 1/2 hours. You will have to prod your bread at times, perhaps even open the bag and check the internal temp or moistness of the bread to get a feel for what is going on.

Remove bread and this is what you get.

I sliced them in half and then toasted them to make a sort of garlic bread concept.

The bread came out like bread which was the main hack. The exterior doesnt have a nice crust because of the method but it didnt come out slimy, just sort of springy. Might be a great way to make bao?

The crumb was dense and not as flavorful as this recipe can yield.

So, I made bread in the sous vide but I wont again because the baking in the oven yields a superior result that cant even be recaptured via toasting.

Does the idea of mixing pomegranate juice with iced coffee make your eyes bug out like the cute little lamby slippers above?

POM has done this craaazy thing with their POM iced coffees.

.. (click for more) ..

I recently received a case of really cute 8 ounce POM pomegranate juices sent to me by the kind people at POM Wonderful.

Pomegranates are the mythical or iconic symbol of fertility…… To read more of this review, please visit the Papaya Ice Cream with POM syrup review.

This is an event that the ministry is vigorously promoting – Oishii Japan. I was given a few delightful minutes to chat with, via interpreter, the Deputy Director of the International Trade and Tariff Team in the International Affairs department of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Mr. Masashi Itoh.

He was very kind to give us the time he did and he was very patient with our many questions about their efforts, Japanese food, and cultural things like the proper way of handing one another their business card.

The take home message that I really appreciated was that Japanese food is about more than just sushi (it really is!) and that the Japanese government is interested in promoting the exquisite quality and breadth of variety that typifies their food and cuisine.

I would give hen’s teeth to be a food blogger in Japan, exploring the ancient as well as new cuisines that Japan has evolved.

There was a great variety of samples provided that included salmon, hamachi yellowfin tuna from Dainishi company, wasabi avocado by Kinjirushi, delicate crab, unagi, salmon roe by the Nomura Trading Company, and a resplendent wakame salad from The Marine Foods Corporation.

Here are a couple shots of the crab dish. A fellow photographer who was competing with me all night to shoot things decided she needed a shot of me eating this crab morsel. Somewhere out there in the Japanese web-o-sphere is a cheesy image of me scarfing this down. Hope I never run across it!

Here are a couple of shots of the wakame salad that I could NOT get enough of. It has this plump crispiness when you bit into it, the flavors (sesame, wakame, other more mysterious aspects) explode in your mouth. It was fantastically refreshing.

They shared delightful unagi.

We had this composite fish ball sort of food that is really quite delicious. This is something that is common in asian cuisine but we do not tend to find it here as part of the Japanese restaurant food cuisine.

Hamachi teriaki (yellowfin tuna)

Sashimi yellowfin

Salmon roe

It was a delicious (did I say that before?) and entertaining evening. I look forward to possibly attending again next year!

As with any event relating to Japanese customs, they provided us with gifts, including this cute shrimp sushi pen!

First, I would LOVE to hear from you all how you personalize your ramen!

What IS in your ramen?

Are you Ramen-Orthodox who likes it plain?

Are you a Ramen-Liberal who likes to make it different every time?

I am not ashamed to say that there are times when the family just wants a certain sort of food and no “healthy” alternative will do. For some families this might be mac & cheese or frozen pizza or twinkies, for us its ramen noodles.

Ramen noodles are ok, if its an occasional treat. (ok, I have a hard time eating them because I had WAY too much of them in college and grad school)

My problem with ramen noodles is that I get bored with it, easily. Until this iteration, I had only experimented with ramens insofar as adding a beaten egg to the noodles after boiling and seasoning to add some protein. This has never appealed to my family so its not been made much.

With the family members crying out for ramen and my being crazy-bored with the unfortunate limp things, I decided to branch out a bit and have the ramen travel to a new and, hopefully, exciting land.

What I came up with was an odd combination of artisanal sustainably-grown ground beef raised on the Golden Acres ranch in Waterloo, New York, homegrown organic tomatoes, organic green onions, and organic oregano, MSG-loaded Del Taco taco seasoning, MSG-loaded ramen noodle flavoring and MSG-loaded ramen noodles. If I make this again, I might need to either simply use carbon monoxide treated ground beef and pesticide and MSG treated veggies from the grocery store or organic MSG-free ramen and my own mix of organic taco seasonings so that there is not such a karmic clash!

This recipe is not earth shattering, its obvious! I just thought I would put it together like this to make it easy.

Mexi-Cali Ramen served in mini-pumpkin bowls

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 packet Taco Seasoning
• 1 tomato, cubed
• 3 green onions, confetti dice
• sprig of fresh oregano
• 5 packets ramen noodles, chicken flavor (more or less, up to you)
• 1 pat butter per noodle batch
• 5 mini pumpkins

Directions:

Brown the beef and then prepare as per the taco seasonings packet, adding in the fresh tomatoes, 1/4 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano, and the white part of the diced green onions (save the green part for garnish).

Prepare the ramen noodles such that you remove the noodles from the boil-water, drain, add a bit of butter and a sprinkle of the MSG flavoring packet. Toss in a bit of the green onion dice and more chopped fresh oregano too.

Hollow out the mini pumpkins.

Put ramen noodles in the pumpkin bowl. Spoon some of the taco meat on top. Garnish with diced green onion and a bit of fresh oregano.

Related Posts:

• Ramen: Nothing lost in translation

Technorati Tags: personalize, ramen, Orthodox, plain, Liberal, twinkies, ramen noodles, college, grad school, egg, protein, artisanal, sustainably, ground beef, homegrown, organic, tomato, green onion, oregano, MSG, taco, seasoning, carbon monoxide, pesticide, karmic, Mexi-Cali Ramen served in mini-pumpkin bowls, butter, pumpkin, onion

I would like to introduce you to a product made by the Tiger Tiger company that I found at my big box grocery store here in Massachusetts (USA) that has wowed me to such a degree that I am actually writing about it here. If you are a regular reader, you would know that I don’t usually do this sort of thing.

I have used several of their Indian Sauces:

• Kashmiri Mild Korma Sauce
• Peshwari Murgh Tikka Masala
• A creamy butter sauce I can not find listed on their site

Tiger Tiger makes much more than these three sauces. They make Thai, Japanese, and Chinese sauces.

Their product range is wide, including:

• gluten-free noodles and nutty snacks
• many more coconut, wasabi, rice snacks
• cooking sauces
• salad dressings
• asian dipping dressings and sauces
• marinades
• soups
• various noodles and rices
• Indian and Thai spices and pastes
• all sorts of chutneys
• preserved exotic fruits and vegetables
• coconut products
• gift baskets (which they oddly call hampers)

One thing I know about Indian food is that the sauces, which can make or break a recipe, are long labors of love. I do not keep the whole Indian spice arsenal on hand at home so I never cook Indian recipes.

These Tiger Tiger Indian sauces taste so fantastic and are so useful to make just about any protein seem like a meal from the finest of restaurants.

If I had known that their product photography was so fantastically woeful, I would have shot the jar before I used it. For the purposes of immediacy, I have put one of their photos of the Kashmiri Mild Korma sauce here.

I am not at all certain what they are thinking using photos like this on the web. You can see from the packaging that they have done a professional job of branding and packaging but it is not well conveyed on their site.

What matters to me is the taste but its hard to blog such substandard hazy fuzzy photos!

The other night, I pulled out the Kashmiri Mild Korma sauce and, while crossing my fingers, poured it over some browned ground turkey. I usually never buy ground poultry but the price was right.

The korma sauce transformed the vague ground turkey into a resplendent delightful sauce that I poured over some authentic basmati rice.

For the basmati rice, I bought a tiny package of real basmati rice from Tilda.

Visit the Tilda site for sure. Their site is the diametric opposite of the Tiger Tiger site. Its beautiful, functional, evocative.

Try this link within the Tilda site for some Indian Recipes.

The directions were completely different than regular rice – boil one cup of rice in 6 cups of water for 8-10 minutes and then RINSE with boiling water.

Wild huh?

I let go of my “ingrained” Colombian rice-training and followed the directions to yield knock-out basmati rice.

I apologize for not having photos of any of this but it was night and we ate it so fast, there was no chance to shoot.

Bottom Line:

If you can find the Tiger Tiger products, buy some and try it.

I can see using this with anything from ground beef, pork, poultry, and small pieces of such meats, to tofu.

I am going to get another jar (or 10!) and use it on some cod and also some shrimp.

I just can’t wait!

Let me know if you try it too!

Where to buy online:

• Tiger Tiger

Technorati Tags: Massachusetts, Kashmiri, Korma, Peshwari, Murgh Tikka Masala, butter, Indian, spice, India, Tiger Tiger, Indian, sauce, resplendent, authentic, basmati, rice, Tilda

I received a sample of the 100% Organic Partida Agave Nectar some time ago and it has been quite a journey as I developed recipes for this interesting product.

The Partida Tequila company makes their tequila, as you might expect, from blue agave plants, a succulent that dwells in the arid lands around Jalisco, Mexico. One can also make nectar from these interesting plants and let me assure you, this nectar is quite a wonder. For one, it is sweeter than table sugar. It looks like a thin honey as it is less viscous. It tastes a bit like honey although it’s flavor is not a dominant thing. The most important thing, ok – to me, is that it is fantastically low on the glycemic scale.

Get this, pure agave nectar has a GI of 11 while white sugar is 100. A 10th of the glycemic impact of sugar!

Today I have two drink recipes and one food recipe to show you just a very few possibilities for working with agave nectar.

The first is one I tested just today. Its a nod to the south of the border origin of the nectar as it uses chocolate and it’s consistency is something Montezuma would love – thick and potent.

Blue Agave Nectar Ghirardelli Hot Chocolate

Ingredients:

• 1/4 C chocolate powder
• 1/2 C hot water
• 4 tablespoons 100% Organic Partida Agave Nectar
• Pinch of cinnamon
• 3 squares Ghirardelli 100% Cacao Unsweetened Baking Chocolate
• 3/4 C Fat Free 1/2 and 1/2

Directions:

Combine agave nectar, cinnamon, chocolate powder and hot water in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Mix until incorporated. Add Ghirardelli chocolate squares and then the fat free 1/2 and 1/2, heat until its smooth. Froth with an immersion blender. Do not not add marshmallows if you want to keep the GI low.
I had my rather fussy toddler give it a try and she loved it, even though it was made with grown-up unsweetened chocolate. She liked it with and without the marshmallows.

The second recipe is one that you will see all over the web and I will repeat it here but, since I do not drink tequila, I have not taste tested it. Its not hard to imagine that it is delicious!

Partida Agave Margarita

• 1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
• 3/4 oz 100% Organic Partida Agave Nectar
• 3/4 oz spring water
• 1.5 oz Partida Tequila Blanco, Reposado, or Anejo

Mix it all up in a bucket (or your favorite container), and serve over ice or chilled in a margarita glass.

The third and final recipe is one I developed a couple of weeks ago and, as you likely remember, covered in more detail at this post here.

Irish Steel Cut Oatmeal sweetened with agave nectar and passion fruit gastrique

Ingredients:

• 2 passion fruits
• 3 unsulfered dried organic apricots, sliced thinly
• 1 tablespoon 100% Organic Partida Agave Nectar
• 1 teaspoon Alessi White Balsamic Fig Infused Vinegar
• 3 tablespoons water

Directions:

In a small pan over medium heat, combine the scooped out pulpy seeds of the 2 passion fruits, the sliced apricots, 1 tablespoon of the Agave Nectar, 1 teaspoon of the fig vinegar, and 3 tablespoons of water. Simmer this down until it thickens to your desire consistency. You may need to add some water to thin or simmer longer to get it thicker, up to you! I put the syrup through a strainer to get rid of most of the midnight black seeds (which have these very interesting little divots across their surface) as they didn’t seem very edible to me.

When I served this all up, I put some agave nectar in the oatmeal and stirred it up. I put the oatmeal into the bacon round (secured with a bit of wooden skewer) and then drizzled it with the gastrique and added a bit of apricot. The remainder of apricots were put into a passion fruit rind. Do NOT eat raw passion fruit rind (has cyanide compounds in it).

I hope that these three recipes opened your eyes to the possibilities of agave nectar.

I plan on doing more work with chocolate because when I was making the hot chocolate, I saw how perfectly agave nectar married/melded with the chocolate (I feared it might seize but it didn’t).

Low GI chocolate sauce, oh how thou callest my name.

Products of Interest:

• Partida Tequila Blanco, Reposado, or Anejo
• 100% Organic Partida Agave Nectar
• Alessi White Balsamic Fig Infused Vinegar
• Ghirardelli 100% Cacao Unsweetened Baking Chocolate

Sites of Interest:

• Partida Tequila

Technorati Tags: The Spirit World, Well Fed Network, 100% Organic Partida Agave Nectar, recipe, product, Partida Tequila company, tequila, blue agave plants, Jalisco, Mexico, nectar, lycemic, agave, glycemic impact, agave nectar, chocolate, Montezuma, Blue Agave Nectar, Ghirardelli, cinnamon, Ghirardelli chocolate, marshmallow, Partida Agave Margarita, lime juice, Irish, Steel Cut, passion fruit, apricot, Alessi White Balsamic Fig Infused Vinegar, oatmeal, gastrique

This soda had several good things going for it:

• The grapefruit flavor is very delicate, not overpowering or astringent. I am a great lover of ruby red grapefruit so a stronger flavor would have been fine by me but I appreciate the delicate nature of this drink’s flavor profile.
• Even though this drink is spiked with a variety of energy-promoting substances, it didn’t taste like a chemistry experiment.
• I definitely felt energetic as I did my modest walking workout.

I have tried other energy drinks, especially the sugar-free types, and I never cared for their face-puckering brain-walloping extreme nature. I recently picked up one on my drive to what promised to be an energy-zapping photo shoot and I had a hard time finishing it. By the time I got to the bottom of it’s slim little can, there was a sort of acidic, ascorbic, horrifying sludge that was worse than just about anything I have ever drank.

This Hi Ball grapefruit energy drink is like the polar opposite of that experience.

They make:

• Orange
• Wild Berry
• Lemon Lime
• Grapefruit
• Club soda
• Tonic Water

The ingredients you will find in the Ruby Red Grapefruit flavored drink includes:

• Taurine
• Caffeine
• Guarana
• Ginseng
• Vitamin-B
• No sweeteners – no sugar

You will also see a page on various athletes who are spokespeople for this company. I mention this because its a trip reading about these people and then thinking how I am so NOT like them. I have no illusions that this drink will turn me into a global-class olympic skier or skateboarder, but I do think its a good choice for the adult who needs some energy in the short term without the sugar crash that you get after the loathesome energy bars and drinks that are thrust at the public as if they were actually GOOD for the body.

I would not recommend any of these caffeine and herbal amended drinks for kids and young adults. There is time enough later for them to become addicted to caffeine. They should have enough energy to do the kid things they need to do.

Give the Ruby Red Grapefruit Energy drink and the other flavors a try!

Technorati Tags: taste test, bubbly, drink, treadmill, grapefruit, astringent, flavor profile, spiked, energy, chemistry, experiment, workout, sugar-free, sludge, Hi Ball, polar opposite, Orange, Wild Berry, Lemon Lime, Grapefruit, Club soda, Tonic Water, Taurine, Caffeine, Guarana, Ginseng, Vitamin-B, sweetener, athlete, olympic, skier, skateboard, crash

If you are diabetic, pre-diabetic, following a low carb diet, or simply trying to eat lower processed foods, breakfast can be one of the hardest meals of the day. So much of what we eat here in the US for breakfast is high glycemic.

If you want to eat on the go, it can be extremely difficult to find something that is not almost pure carbs and often highly processed carbs (breakfast cereal, oatmeals, juice, etc).

Before my recent blood sugar test results, this was my breakfast – French Roast Starbucks with milk and a LOT of sugar. (I buy the Starbucks coffee in the bag from the store so I am not talking about a coffee bought in one of their stores). Though this killed my hunger immediately this drink is bad on several levels!

Obviously, loads of white sugar first thing in the morning is non-nutritive and simply counterproductive.

Caffeine causes insulin resistance (Keijzers GB et al. 2002, Graham TE, et al. 2001), especially in skeletal muscle (Thong FSL. et al. 2002) (you can somewhat reverse this effect with exercise).

“Diminished response to insulin, but not exercise/contraction signals leading to glucose transport in skeletal muscle, is a major factor responsible for insulin resistance associated with type 2 diabetes.” (Thong FSL. et al. 2002)

This is a super negative thing because, if you “starve” the skeletal muscles of glucose then your metabolism is not going to be optimal and thus your weight loss efforts will be side-tracked. Further, if you reduce insulin responsivity then your blood sugar will rise. If you “poison” the skeletal muscles, taking them out of the sugar consumption loop to some degree, then blood sugar is even harder to control.

It is well known that a walk will decrease your blood sugar levels, drinking a cup of coffee before hand may not be the best idea.

Just as an aside, we use caffeine in the lab to do all sorts of nasty things to culture cells. It speeds up the cell cycle and can lead to aneuploidies or chromosome abnormalities. Fun stuff isn’t it!

I have to tell you, giving up caffeine is extremely difficult for me but this is just one MORE reason to reconsider cutting it out. The only time I have been able to cut it out has been during pregnancy and its easier then because you have an increased blood volume and all sorts of hormones that seem to help with the feelings of wellness that I use caffeine for.

Today’s breakfast featured here is McCann’s Irish steel-cut oatmeal, sliced star fruit, bacon, a passion fruit gastrique with dried apricots, and an egg.

This entire thing started out simply with the oatmeal and then grew into what you see here because this is what I had on had after going to the grocery store and buying little oddities like passion fruit, star fruit and Alessi White Balsamic Fig Infused Vinegar. I had to figure out a way to make the oatmeal look attractive and taste delicious while not going crazy on sugar. I also wanted to try my sample of Partida Agave Nectar which has a stupendously low glycemic index! I got my sample as a review product from the Well Fed Network but I can not seem to find ordering information online! Will update if I do find it.

Why steel-cut oats? It has a lower glycemic index than rolled oats. Why is that? Because rolled oats have been so processed (rolled, steamed, beaten within an inch of it’s life) that they have a higher percentage of simple sugars. Steel-cut oats are more whole and thus have not been “pre-digested” to some degree by the rolled oat processing.

The other ingredients are listed below with their GI values or cal counts:

• Steel cut oatmeal – 52 (Rolled oats oatmeal – 75)
• Agave nectar – 10 (White sugar – 100)
• Passion fruit – 30
• Star Fruit – 40 cals – tastes sort of melon like but brighter and its juicy too, delish and not JUST a garnish! See note at the bottom*.
• Egg and bacon – zero (though protein is insulinic)

I followed the package directions for the oatmeal (a bit more than 30 minutes of cooking)

The passion fruit gastrique is something I made up so I will provide the recipe below.

Passion fruit Apricot Fig Gastrique

Ingredients:

• 2 passion fruits
• 3 unsulfered dried organic apricots, sliced thinly
• 1 tablespoon Partida Agave nectar
• 1 teaspoon Alessi White Balsamic Fig Infused Vinegar
• 3 tablespoons water

Directions:

In a small pan over medium heat, combine the scooped out pulpy seeds of the 2 passion fruits, the sliced apricots, 1 tablespoon of the Agave Nectar, 1 teaspoon of the fig vinegar, and 3 tablespoons of water. Simmer this down until it thickens to your desire consistency. You may need to add some water to thin or simmer longer to get it thicker, up to you!

I put the syrup through a strainer to get rid of most of the midnight black seeds (which have these very interesting little divots across their surface) as they didn’t seem very edible to me.

When I served this all up, I put some agave nectar in the oatmeal and stirred it up. I put the oatmeal into the bacon round (secured with a bit of wooden skewer) and then drizzled it with the gastrique and added a bit of apricot. The remainder of apricots were put into a passion fruit rind. Do NOT eat raw passion fruit rind (has cyanide compounds in it).

* A note on star fruit: If you have renal disease, and especially if you are on dialysis, please do not eat star fruit. You can not clear a substance or toxin (oxalic acid) found in it. This is called star fruit intoxication.

Star fruit, belonging to the Oxalidaceae family, species Averrhoa carambola, is a popular fruit among Orientals. There have been reports of hiccup, confusion, and occasional fatal outcomes in uraemic patients after ingestion of star fruit. An excitatory neurotoxin from star fruit has been implicated although the exact nature of this toxic substance has not been identified. A group of seven patients is described from the dialysis centres at Queen Mary and Tung Wah Hospitals who developed symptoms including hiccup, confusion, vomiting, impaired consciousness, muscle twitching and hyperkalaemia shortly after ingestion of star fruit. Symptoms of most patients resolved after intensified dialysis or spontaneously, and no mortality was observed. The close temporal relationship of ingestion of star fruit and onset of symptoms strongly suggests the existence of a causal relationship between the two. It is recommended that uraemic patients should totally abstain from star fruit due to these rare but potentially fatal complications. The clinical manifestations of other reported series and current evidence for the possible candidate(s) of the neurotoxin are discussed. (Tse, KC et al. 2003)

References used:

• Keijzers GB et al. Caffeine Can Decrease Insulin Sensitivity in Humans. Diabetes Care 25:364-369, 2002
• Graham TE. et al. Caffeine ingestion elevates plasma insulin response in humans during an oral glucose tolerance test. Can J Physiol Pharmacol. 2001 Jul;79(7):559-65.
• Thong FSL. et al. Caffeine-Induced Impairment of Insulin Action but Not Insulin Signaling in Human Skeletal Muscle Is Reduced by Exercise. Diabetes 51:583-590, 2002
• Tse, KC et al. Star fruit intoxication in uraemic patients: case series and review of the literature. Intern Med J. 2003 Jul;33(7):314-6.

Sites of Interest:

• Blood Type Diet TYPEbase4 database of relevant data on foods you likely eat!

Related Posts:

• Low GI Recipe: Whole wheat tortilla ginger tumeric tofu wrap with young spring peas
• Fast Glycemic Facts: The Second Meal Effect
• Pre-Diabetes and low glycemic cooking

Technorati Tags: diabetic, pre-diabetic, low carb diet, breakfast, high glycemic, cereal, oatmeal, blood sugar, French Roast, Starbucks, sugar, Caffeine, insulin resistance, skeletal muscle, insulin, exercise, glucose transport, type 2 diabetes, metabolism, coffee, pregnancy, McCann’s Irish steel-cut oatmeal, star fruit, bacon, passion fruit, gastrique, dried apricot, Alessi White Balsamic Fig Infused Vinegar, steel-cut oats, rolled oats, passion fruit gastrique, Passion fruit Apricot Fig Gastrique, Partida, Agave, nectar

(Bhutanese red rice onigiri with tofu and split pea puree, recipe towards the end of this post)

Today’s post is going to have multiple personalities. I am going to cover three main topics:

• Low Glycemic Cooking and why I care
• A recipe for the Bhutanese red rice onigiri you see above
• A how-to on making onigiri with my new gadget – an onigiri form

Low Glycemic cooking and why I care

As a general rule, I respect everyone’s right to their own eating styles. I care that people eat the way they need to and I am no one to nit-pick others for that. My story that follows is like many of you. I can not say I have any answers and I am not an expert. I am sharing this story so that you can understand how I got into my current predicament – I am pre-diabetic, according to my doctor.

Like most of the over-developed world, I have had to diet from an early age. Even though I swam 4 miles a day for two different swim teams, I still had to watch what I ate. When I decided that the swimming was more than I could bear anymore I decided to quit at the end of freshman year (4:30 am every day for the State National team and after school every day for the high school team, I never stopped smelling of chlorine and my hair was blond at it’s tips – I have blue black hair mind you).

Then, the weight FLEW on my body. At the tender age of 16 I was on Nutri/System. I lost 50 lbs and was down to 117 lbs (was 5′5″, have shrunk since then). I was sort of happy but my body wasn’t. When I went back to school that fall, I went back to regular food and the weight came back. Over the many years since, I have done Nutri/System many times, Weight Watchers many times, all the while, killing my metabolism. The only times when I maintained a loss after these diets was when I was working out excessively, running 3 miles a day and barely eating. In more recent times, I have tried the Atkins diet (I saw my grandma try it back in the early 80s with some success) and it worked but it was unsustainable. After a while, you can honestly get sick and tired of butter, bacon, steak, eggs, essentially any high protein food. The worst thing about the low carb high protein diet is the imbalance in something about one’s hydration (must be the ketosis) such that when one goes off of this diet, the weight (both water and fat) comes back quickly and with a depressing vengeance.

This has always seemed unfair to me because my dad and my little sister literally eat what ever they wish (or wished, my dad has passed away) and never get or got fat. So within my own family, there is the object lesson that if one’s body is genetically predisposed to accumulate fat, IT WILL.

In recent times, I have had to make peace with my body and not let the fat twist my entire self-worth. That is a very hard process and I would not say I had complete success. Doing this food blog and also, especially, doing the food photography has helped me in ways that may not be intuitive. When I do food photography (and the cooking for it), I am not eating the food and I am not craving it. (I have never been obsessive about eating food nor binged on it so I do not have that dynamic) When I am cooking, styling, and shooting, I appreciate the food as an art form, as shapes, composition, as artistic statement, as cultural statement, as a sharing of my identity or my process of discovery. Same thing with the writing. I can not help writing about food the way I do because my curiosity leads me to ask questions and learn, just for the sake of learning. This is a bit of overflow from the fact that we homeschool and life is about learning.

(Insulin hexamer: Wikipedia source – public domain)

All of this is fine and dandy but my doctor recently witnessed one of my hypoglycemic episodes (have had them all my life, thin or fat), tested my blood sugar which was fine, and so he sent out blood tests for something called the HbA1c test (hemoglobin A1c test or hemoglobin glycosylation – an assay that determines the amount of sugars that have been stuck on the hemoglobin molecules.. this is indicative of the levels of sugar in one’s blood over a few months). The following is a down to earth description of this assay.

“Sugar in the bloodstream can become attached to the hemoglobin (the part of the cell that carries oxygen) in red blood cells. This process is called glycosylation (pronounced gli-kos-a-lay’-shen). Once the sugar is attached, it stays there for the life of the red blood cell, which is about 120 days. The higher the level of blood sugar, the more sugar attaches to red blood cells. The hemoglobin A1c test measures the amount of sugar sticking to the hemoglobin in the red blood cells. Results are given in percentages.” Diabetes Tool Box

For those of you who are more scientifically oriented, try this abstract:

“Glucose reacts nonenzymatically with the NH2-terminal amino acid of the beta chain of human hemoglobin by way of a ketoamine linkage, resulting in the formation of hemoglobin AIc. Other minor components appear to be adducts of glucose 6-phosphate and fructose 1,6-diphosphate. These hemoglobin s are formed slowly and continuously throughout the 120-day life-span of the red cell. There is a two- to threefold increase in hemoglobin AIc in the red cells of patients with diabetes mellitus. By providing an integrated measurement of blood glucose, hemoglobin AIc is useful in assessing the degree of diabetic control. Furthermore, this hemoglobin is a useful model of nonenzymatic glycosylation of other proteins that may be involved in the long-term complications of the disease.” The glycosylation of hemoglobin: relevance to diabetes mellitus. HF Bunn, KH Gabbay, and PM Gallop. Science 1978: 200(4337):21 – 27.

Mine came back 6.2, which seems to indicate pre-diabetes and a cause of concern for my doc. I can tell you that I have figured I was pre-diabetic for a long time but every time I asked for tests, they came back negative (they never gave me the glycosylation test before). My doc has told me that I have three months to control the blood sugars and if I do not, I will have to go on meds. I have a natural dislike for meds so it was not good news!

I know that diabetes is absolutely nothing to mess around with and I want to reverse this pre-diabetic thing with whole foods and moderate exercise. Let me tell you though, when you start looking at what is recommended for the diabetic diet you find one commonality: there is NO consensus. I also found that diet recommendations for diabetes and pre-diabetes seems to be a dumping ground for ALL of the vague advice, all that stuff you have heard over the years and found didn’t work for you. Things like: Eat food X because so and so study says to! Yikes. Things like: eat only low fat foods, eat only fish, eat TONS of omega-3s, eat no fish, eat no carbs, eat only a few carbs, eat .. yadda yadda yadda.

Excuse me, but I am getting flash backs and they are not fun ones. I despair at the mediocrity and vagueness of the diet recommendations one finds for this condition. Its all a recipe for unsustainablity. Food is inherently associated with the desire to become satiated, even if it is through food porn.

If my life is on the line, I want something more than the flavor-of-the day diet recommendations.

I want some metrics.

This is where the low glycemic cooking comes in. I am going to explain this quickly because I have already yammered on WAY too long.

(Glucose: Wikipedia source – public domain)

The word “glycemic” in “glycemic index” comes from the word glucose, which you may know is sugar. A glycemic index is a measure of sugar. In this case, its the measure of sugars released into the bloodstream after the ingestion of a certain food. To determine a glycemic index, they have people drink a solution of 50 gm of glucose in water and then, after a certain period of time, they pull blood and test the sugar content of the blood. They set this value to an arbitrary 100. It is the index against which other foods are compared. To determine the GI of a food, like white bread, they gather a group of test subjects (people) who eat a slice of bread and then get the blood tested. They average the results (each person has their own unique food processing profile but we tend to have similar ones, within some sort of predictable range of variability) and then set the GI for white bread according to the results (its 70 for white bread produced in the US). They have tested 500 foods so far (its very expensive), tho you may come across foods in the store that claims to have a GI, it is likely not tested in humans but calculated predicated on the types of ingredients it has. Thats the rub, foods may be predicted to have a certain GI but the body may do something completely different with it.

Case in point would be white rice, sticky jasmine especially, which has a GI higher than glucose. This is because this rice is almost pure starch and starch, when it hits our bodies, is almost instantly broken down and dumped into our blood as sugars (there are enzymes in your saliva, namely amyloses, which start the process the moment you put the rice in your mouth). The sugars in the glucose solution are somewhat slower to pass into the bloodstream.

When you eat something with a high GI, like that rice in sushi or similar starchy foods, almost the entirety of that mass of starch goes into your blood like a race car, as a bolus in medical speak. You might as well inject several milliliters of sugar straight into your veins. Why is this a problem? Your body as not evolved to handle huge boluses of sugar. It “scrambles” to pull the sugar out (insulin is the messenger to the cells to let the sugar inside) because high sugar in the blood is “toxic” to the vessel walls, causing damage over time. When this happens and the body has put out insulin enough to deal with this sugar overload, it overshoots and then blood sugars drop. Low blood sugar is bad news too because the one organ in your body that is a sugar-freak is your brain. Low blood sugar equals stress to the brain and even coma and death.

The key to a healthy body and a healthy life lies in one huge word – BALANCE.

Eating high GI foods pushes your system out of balance. Over time, with a diet consistent in sugar boluses, your insulin response becomes impaired and you develop pre-diabetes and then diabetes and then your systems begin to fail.

I am going to begin to integrate low GI cooking into my family’s diet. We all need to lose weight too so the diet will also tend towards less fat but I do not want to be a fat nazi. I also do not want to be the food nazi either. I want the family to enjoy the food while also, hopefully, appreciate trying new foods and in the end, lose some weight.

If you are interested in doing this there are several things to do: learn about GI, learn about the GI rankings of your favorite foods, access your diet, find a way to do some exercise every day (walking lowers your blood sugar, another tool in your management of sugar-rich living).

Learning:

I went to Amazon and got these two books below, there are MANY others. You will have to decide whats right for you. In the future, I am going to try to give lists of relevant blogs, for your educational pleasure.

• The New Glucose Revolution: The Authoritative Guide to the Glycemic Index – the Dietary Solution for Lifelong Health (Glucose Revolution) $10.68 and £7.76 UK
• The Everything Glycemic Index Cookbook: 300 Appetizing Recipes to Keep Your Weight Down And Your Energy Up! (Everything: Cooking) $9.42 and £6.94 UK

There is A LOT more to learn, especially about glycemic loads and how protein rich foods have high GIs. Read and read some more.

GI ranking:

The authors of the GI book above also have a fantastic website that will help you understand GI but also to find your favorite foods (if tested) in their GI database.

• The Glycemic Index

Diet tracking:

If you are so inclined, you can track your food intake and calorie expenditure over time at various websites. The only one I have experience with is Fit Day.

• Fit Day

I wish you all the luck if you too are having to deal with this. Its a process, it can be depressing, it can be overwhelming but it can not be ignored.

Recipe: Bhutanese red rice onigiri with tofu and split pea puree

In our family, we eat potatoes (high GI) only rarely. We tend to eat rice as our starch. The problem with that is that white rice (sticky is my all time favorite) is very bad when it comes to GI. To keep rice in our diet, an easy peasy starch, I am going to introduce rices that are lower GI. This would include brown rice, red rice, and wild rice. It also means introducing rice-like alternatives like pearl barley and bulgar wheat.

(The Rice Plant: Wikipedia source – public domain)

The GI rankings for several types of rices (and alternatives) are:

• Jasmine rice, made in rice cooker 109
• White rice, boiled 45
• Brown rice, steamed 50
• Red rice 59
• Wild rice 54
• Pearl barley, boiled 35
• Bulgar wheat 47

I picked up some Bhutanese red rice (produced by Lotus Foods) recently and wanted to test it in a recipe where I would have normally used sticky jasmine rice.

Bhutanese red rice is:

“An ancient colored-bran short-grain rice grown 8,000 feet in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. Irrigated with 1,000 year old glacier water rich in trace minerals, this exotic rice has a nutty/earthy flavor, soft texture and beautiful red russet color.” SOURCE

Lotus Foods has lots of very interesting wholesome products as well.

Visit the Lotus Foods site for more information.

I decided to make onigiri, a Japanese food that is essentially a ball of rice with one’s favorite bits added to it. Often, it is wrapped with nori but I didn’t have any on hand so I used, as a substitute, the Vietnamese rice paper used to make spring rolls (spring roll wrappers).

I also served tofu (essentially zero GI) and a split pea puree (25 GI) to increase the green and protein.

Ingredients:

• 1 C Lotus Foods Bhutanese red rice
• 3 C cold water
• sea salt, pinch
• 1 spring roll wrapper
• basil leaf, sliced into ribbons
• black and white sesame seeds
• Roasted chicken slices, about an ounce
• extra firm tofu, cubed
• olive oil to saute
• minced ginger
• minced garlic
• sea salt, pinch
• 1 C green split peas
• 4 C cold chicken stock
• sea salt, pinch

Directions:

In a heavy stock pot put 1 C red rice and 3 C cold water, bring to a boil. Cover rice and put on low for about 1 hour. This will cook it longer than the package directions so that the grains pop a bit and the rice is easier to form later. When done, uncover, fluff, and allow to cool.

At the same time, put 1 C dried split peas in 4 C cold chicken stock, bring to a boil, and then simmer on low (loose cover) for about an hour. You may need to remove some of the liquid toward the end to make the puree your desired thickness. Keep warm but covered.

Once rice is cooked, spoon some into an onigiri form, leaving some room for the chicken slices in the middle. I have some pictures of the onigiri form below.

This type comes in two halves and this one makes two onigiri at the same time.

The top is pushed down over the rice, compressing it into the cake like shape desired.

The bottom half of this form has some little openings that you can use to push the onigiri out.

Using this mold transforms onigiri construction into a dream. To see how you make onigiri by hand visit this site – How to make onigiri.

Because I did not have the nori to wrap the onigiri, I improvised and added a strip of hydrated spring roll wrapper around it. This isn’t necessary but I wanted to approximate it. I trapped some basil leaf ribbons and black sesame seeds between the wrapper strips and the rice.

Wrap your tofu block in some paper towels and press with something heavy to remove some of the water it comes packed in. Cube the tofu and cook as you like. The way I like is with some oil (sesame or olive oil or both), some garlic, ginger, and some onions. I saute to get some tan color and then add some soy sauce. I simmer the tofu a bit longer and then serve warm.

Serve as desired and enjoy!

Products of Interest:

• Lotus Foods Bhutanese red rice
• Spring roll wrappers (rice paper)- 12 oz

Books of Interest:

• The New Glucose Revolution: The Authoritative Guide to the Glycemic Index – the Dietary Solution for Lifelong Health (Glucose Revolution) $10.68 and £7.76 UK
• The Everything Glycemic Index Cookbook: 300 Appetizing Recipes to Keep Your Weight Down And Your Energy Up! (Everything: Cooking) $9.42 and £6.94 UK

Sites of Interest:

• The Glycemic Index
• eGullet discussion on onigiri
• How to guestimate the GI of whole grains
• Onigiri Wiki entry
• Hand-forming onigiri

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