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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Food queries? Food writer Lindsey Nair can help you

By Lindsey Nair

food writer Lindsey Nair

Food writer Lindsey Nair

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My father has a way of seeking repayment for all my frantic calls for culinary advice: He asks me to help him find obscure ingredients.

Because he lives in a rural area, the ingredients he seeks are sometimes not so obscure by city standards. But I'm happy to help if he can't find tahini or quinoa at the Clifton Forge Kroger or the Covington Walmart.

I have the same give-and-take relationship with many of my readers, especially those who frequently call or comment on my blog. They have helped me immensely in the past, and if I can't answer their questions off the top of my head, I'm willing to go digging.

I've seen a fascinating array of questions lately, so I thought it would be fun to share them, along with my answers, with other readers.

I probably won't do a question-and-answer column on a regular basis, but I am always willing to help with food-related queries. Don't hesitate to send them my way.

Q: I'd love a quinoa recipe, but I wonder what's in it that put it on "The 10 Things You Need to Eat" list?

-- Kristen

Kristen asked this question after I blogged about "The 10 Things" by Dave Lieberman and Anahad O'Connor.

Among the 10 super foods they recommended was a humble little grain called quinoa, which has been hailed as the "supergrain of the future," according to "Food Lover's Companion" by Sharon Tyler Herbst.

According to the Lieberman/O'Connor book, NASA scientists chose quinoa as the best grain to send into space with astronauts because it packs such a nutritious punch. It has been popular in South America for generations, but we North Americans are only recently starting to appreciate it.

Quinoa is considered a complete protein because it contains all eight of the essential amino acids. Herbst writes that it is also higher in unsaturated fat (the cholesterol-lowering kind) and lower in carbohydrates than other grains, and it contains more minerals and vitamins.

Quinoa can be used in almost any dish that calls for rice. It is also ground into flour and made into pasta. Look for quinoa products in the natural food department at your grocery store.


Q: OK, so is it "keen-wah" or "kwi-noah"? We argue in the office about the pronunciation, but agree on the yumminess.

-- Joel

Quinoa is pronounced keen-WAH, Joel. That became painfully clear to me after I totally botched the pronunciation during one of my first interviews on the food beat. The chef was nice about it; I was mortified.


Q: With the start of the Olympics, I was wondering if there were any foods associated with Vancouver. My first thought was salmon. Any other ideas?

-- Amy

Amy, you are right on with the salmon guess -- salmon is a very popular food on the North Pacific coastline and is prepared in a variety of ways.

Wendy Underwood with the Vancouver tourism bureau also suggests the "BC Roll," a sushi roll named for British Columbia that contains crispy fried salmon skin, fish roe and cucumbers.

"Of course, with such a large Asian population, any Asian-style dish that incorporates fresh seafood would be appropriate, too," Wendy wrote in an e-mail.

I also discovered a dessert called a Nanaimo bar that is named for a small town on Vancouver Island and is apparently wildly popular with the locals.

Check out the recipe for these buttery, custardy, chocolatey three-layer bars at right.


Q: I let my cast-iron pan get rusty! Any tips for quickly getting it back into shape?

-- Ken

Ken, if all you're seeing are small patches of rust, you can use steel wool or an S.O.S. Steel Wool Soap Pad to scrub it away, then completely re-season your pan.

But a pan that has almost completely rusted over is going to require a lot of scrubbing. One blog reader had heard that you can burn off the offending rust using the self-cleaning cycle on the oven, but I wasn't sure about that so I called Lodge, the leading manufacturer of cast iron.

Spokesman Mark Kelly said you can indeed use the self-cleaning cycle to remove rust, mimicking an old-school method that involved submerging the piece in a campfire.

Be sure to line the bottom of your oven with aluminum foil and place the cookware upside down on a middle oven rack before starting the self-clean.

After it has cooled completely, you must re-season it with oil. For specific information on how to season cast iron, check the "Use and care" section at www.lodgemfg.com.


Q: Do you know of any place locally where you can buy fresh cassava leaves?

-- Maria

First, I should probably answer the question, "What the heck is a cassava?" It might help to know it is synonymous with yucca or yucca root, a tuber that is popular in South American and African cooking.

Bitter cassava is used to make cassava flour, a prevalent thickening agent, and tapioca. That's right -- it's the same stuff we use to make pudding!

Alas, cassava leaves are nowhere near as prominent as tapioca. I called just about every ethnic market in the Roanoke and New River valleys that might carry the product, with minimal success.

In Roanoke, frozen, ground cassava leaves are available at J&L Foods on Brambleton Avenue. Oriental Market on Williamson Road can get fresh cassava leaves, but you'll have to check with them in advance.

Oasis World Market in Blacksburg does not carry them regularly, but I'm told if you ask, they might be able to order some. J&L Foods will also try to find them when they head to Washington D.C. for a pickup, but there's no guarantee.

I'm putting this question to the masses. Does anyone else know where a person can find fresh cassava, or yucca, leaves in Southwest Virginia?

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