Author: Brian

Three Belgian Breweries in Three Belgian Cities (Brussels, Bruges and Ghent)

Brian

We just got back from a trip to Belgium, and have been drinking Belgian beer for over a week straight.  We generally plan our itineraries around food and booze, first mapping out where/what we will eat and drink, then we see what kind of historic things we can fit in between. Breweries, distilleries and wineries almost always have top priority.

This trip was of course no exception and Belgian beer has a reputation that needs no explanation, so I’ll cut to the chase. We visited three cities: Brussels, Bruges and Ghent and hit one brewery in each. There are hundreds of breweries in the country, but we selected these three because they were centrally located and easy to get to on foot.

More from Cantillon brewery.

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#1 Cantillon – Brussels

Rue Gheude 56, 1070 Anderlecht, Belgium

Practical Stuff:
Open: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 1000 – 1700
Closed: Wednesdays, Sundays and public holidays
Cost: 7€ (comes with two sample sized beers)
Tour is self-guided and takes about 45 minutes.
More info: http://www.cantillon.be/

Going to Cantillon is like stepping back in time to see how beer was made 100+ years ago. Here they make Lambics, Gueuzes, Faros and Krieks the old fashion way, literally. Nearly all of the structure and equipment is the original from when it opened in 1900.

The process of milling and mashing the grain is pretty much the same as modern breweries today, but what is truly fascinating about this place is that they rely on spontaneous fermentation to make their beer. That means they do not add yeast, but instead pump their wort to a large shallow tank that is exposed to the ambient air, and wild yeast finds its way to the liquid. They are the only brewery in Brussels still doing it this way.

The beer is then pumped into large oak or chestnut barrels where it is left to ferment for up to three years. Yes, you read that right, three years. The beer can then be bottled or have fruit added, which gives them their kreiks.

Touring Cantillion is really an amazing experience because the place is unlike any brewery you’ve ever been to before. Like all great tours, at the end you get two tasting glasses to drink in the bar area. Even if you don’t feel like doing the tour, you can still buy a bottle and hang out for a drink.

Fair warning though, lambics are not for everyone because they are quite sour/bitter. If that’s not your thing, the tour is still worth seeing.

 

Ok one more from the half moon brewery in Brugge.

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#2 Brouwerij De Halve Maan (Half Moon Brewery) – Bruges

Walplein 26, Bruges, Belgium

Practical Stuff:
Daily Tours between 1100-1600 in Dutch, English and French. On Saturday Tours available til 1700.
Check their website for times of the tours and to book your reservation.
Cost: 8.50€ (comes with a glass of their Brugse Zot Blond)
Group guided tour takes about 45 minutes and includes lots of stairs.
More info: http://www.halvemaan.be/en/brewery-visit

Half Moon Brewery in Bruges is set in a beautiful part of a ridiculously picturesque city. Nestled between a cafe-lined plaza and one of the city’s canals, this brewery is half modern and half museum. The brewing kettles were recently upgraded and the bar/restaurant area looks like an upscale brewpub. Taking the tour however, you see the evolution of machinery and equipment that have been used over four generations of brewing.

The tour meanders up and down stairs, through old lofts and between tanks. A brief stop on the roof gives an amazing view of the city, but also make it clear that they have no more room to expand their facilities and production. The solution, our guide explained, is to build a beer pipeline from the brewery to a bottling facility over a kilometer away. That’s right, a beer pipeline.

Beers here were great; they go by two different labels: Brugse Zot (with a blond and a dubbel variety) and Straffe Hendrik (with a tripel and quadrupel variety). You can try them all in the bar/restaurant and get lunch or dinner while you’re at it.

 

#3 Gentse Gruut – Ghent

Rekelingestraat 5, 9000 Gent (When you look this up by the address on Google maps it puts you on the wrong side of the river. It is directly across from Gravensteen Castle on Rekelingestraat)

Practical Stuff:
Tour by appointment, mainly for groups Check their website to book.
Cost: 9.00€ (8+people) or 10.00€ (less than 8 people). Comes with three tasters.
Tour/tasting can be paired with some small food items.
More info: http://www.gruut.be/

Gentse Gruut is super interesting because they do not use hops in their beer, but rather a mix of herbs. This is apparently how beer was made before the days of hops, we’re talking medieval time here. Only one of their five beers has any hops in it, and honestly it was hard to tell which.

To be honest, we did not figure out the tour at this brewery, which recently moved locations. After walking by it several times (see note above about the address on Google maps) we came into what looked like a reception or event hall. There was a bar, tables and chairs, and OH HEY! a very small brewing setup. Given the really small size, it’s impressive the reach this beer has because we saw it all over the city. We certainly could have asked about the tour, but we really just wanted to sit and drink this hop-less beer, which turned out to be SUPER good.

One more interesting fact about this place is that the head brewer/owner is a woman named Annick De Splenter, which is really cool to see in an otherwise dude-dominated industry.

 

Have you been to any other awesome breweries in Belgium? Let us know because we’ll definitely be doing the pilgrimage again soon!

La Rovira Brew Bar: Another Awesome Craft Beer Stop in Gràcia

Brian

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Last Monday, August 1o, La Rovira opened its doors and taps just in time for Festa Major de Gràcia. Since then, as far as we can tell, they’ve been killing it. One or both of us have been three times since the opening, partly because it’s minutes away from our place, but mainly because they have an incredible selection of craft beers from all over. La Rovira tap line up-traveling to taste La Rovira has 18 beers on tap from craft breweries far and wide and with many, many more in bottles. It’s enough to keep any beer enthusiast busy for a while. They are also serving their own beer called De La Vila, which was made just for the Festa Major. It’s a light session IPA with a citrus and floral nose and a slightly fruity taste with mild bitterness from the hops. Most standard IPAs have an ABV (alcohol by volume) in the 5.0-7.0% range (some are much higher); this one comes in at 4.7%, which means you can drink it all afternoon on a hot summer day and still find your way home.  

We are super pumped to have another great craft beer bar in the neighborhood, and La Rovira joins some other greats along Gràcia’s growing beer route like Chivuo’s, Cara B, El Col-leccionista, Catalluna and La Cervesera Artesana (and if you’re a homebrewer, there is Family Beer).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to head back over to finish the rest of the 18 beers. See you there. Cheers.

La Rovira Brew Bar
Carrer de Rabassa, 23,
08024 Barcelona
+34 691 20 24 10
Metro:  Joanic I (L4/yellow line)

Ultra-Processed Foods Are Making Us Fat and Unhealthy

Brian

In a previous post, I talked about what inspired me to do my thesis on food and cooking.  Now that it’s done and turned in, I thought I’d adapt some portions of my writing and focus on them here. One of the first, and most significant topics when talking about our food, is that of food processing. 

Scientists, doctors, nutritionists and health organizations all acknowledge that the production and consumption of processed food and drinks are important causes in the current pandemic of obesity and related chronic diseases.1

As food writer Michael Pollan so eloquently puts it, big food corporations “cook very differently from how people do (which is why we usually call what they do ‘food processing’ instead of cooking). They tend to use much more sugar, fat and salt than people cooking for people do; they also deploy novel chemical ingredients seldom found in pantries in order to make their food last longer and look fresher that it really is”.2

These novel techniques and ingredients, along with excessive amounts of sugar, fat and salt, create a diet that health professionals describe as “intrinsically nutritionally unbalanced and intrinsically harmful to health”.3

Shall I go on? OK, I will…

Carlos A. Monteiro, Director of the Center for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition at the University of Sao Paulo, proposes that the amount of processing our food undergoes is what determines how healthy or unhealthy it will be, not the food itself, nor its nutrient parts.

Across the globe, government food recommendations do not recognize this difference, and as a result, food like whole fresh fruit, fruit canned in sugary syrup and reconstituted sugary fruit beverages all get classified as “fruit”.4

Side note: A 2010 study found that the diets of nearly the entire US population did not fall within federal dietary recommendations. So, even with sugary fruit beverages being classified as fruits, we still do not meet the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables.

Monteiro argues that most food today has some degree of processing and that there is little use in classifying food into only processed and unprocessed groups. Instead, he proposes three levels to describe the drastic differences in processing that occur between, for instance, pre-washed fruit and a gummy fruit snack.

The three categories are:

Group 1: Unprocessed and minimally processed foods:
No processing, or mostly physical processes used to make single whole foods more durable, accessible, convenient, palatable or safe.
Group 2: Processed culinary or food industry ingredients:
Extraction and purification of components of single whole foods, resulting in producing ingredients used in the preparation and cooking of dishes and meals made from Group 1 foods in homes and traditional restaurants, or else in the formulation by manufacturers of Group 3 foods.
Group 3: Ultra-processed food products:
Processing of a mix of Group 2 ingredients and Group 1 foodstuffs in order to create durable, accessible, convenient, and palatable ready-to-eat or to-heat food products liable to be consumed as snacks or desserts or replace home-prepared dishes.

The groups are described more thoroughly below (from Monteiro’s research) but it’s easy to see that foods like cookies, snacks, pre-prepared meals, processed meat like chicken nuggets and burgers all belong in Group 3.6

Montiero- food classifications
From “Food classifications based on the extent and purpose of industrial processing”. by C. Monteiro, 2010, Cadernos de saude publia, 26, p. 2042. Copyright 2010 by Carlos Monteiro.

 

He does not propose that healthy diets are made up of entirely unprocessed/minimally processed foods, but rather a healthy balance of the three groups.

The problem is, that across countries like Brazil, the UK and the US, we seem to completely lack the ability to maintain this balance.

In Brazil, ultra-processed (Group 3) foods made up 20% of consumed calories. As income increased, so too did the presence of these ultra-processed foods. In the households with the highest income, nearly one-third of all calories came from ultra-processed foods.7

In the UK, ultra-processed foods made up 45% caloric intake.8

In the United States, the five most commonly consumed foods were all considered Group 3 foods: sodas, cakes and pastries, burgers, pizza and potato chips. These five foods alone made up 20% of the total calories consumed in the United States.9

A similar study in Canada showed that 61.7% of dietary energy consumed came from ultra-processed foods and that 80% of the Canadian population had diets consisting of more than 50% of ultra-processed foods in terms of caloric intake.10

Yeah? So what does that mean?

Monteiro’s claim that the act of processing food is a culprit in our rapid decline in health is being confirmed more specifically in subsequent studies. One recent study showed a link between two commonly used emulsifiers and the development of metabolic syndrome and low-grade inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract of mice.11

Emulsifiers can be found in nearly all processed food and are used to prevent ingredients like fats and oils from separating. They go by many names, but some of the common ones are: polysorbate 80, lecithin, carrageenan, polyglycerols and xanthan gum. The “metabolic syndrome” that these items are linked to is a term used to describe a group of risk factors, including high levels of cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar, as well as obesity. Someone with metabolic syndrome is more likely to develop more serious health issues like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes.12

The addition of emulsifiers is by no means the only cause of obesity, but the inflammation that it causes in the gastrointestinal tract appears to interfere with the feeling of “being full” while eating.13 Not feeling full often leads to overeating and, in turn, the development of more fat.

So what can I do about it?

Simple! First, decrease, limit and/or eliminate ultra-processed foods from what you eat. It has clear benefits in preventing disease and promoting general well being, Monteiro says.14

Second, even with the downward trend of cooking, more than two-thirds of caloric intake for adults in the US still occurs in the home.15 Therefore, the most good can be done by focusing on food and meals we consume at home.

I think these point to a clear path forward: cut down on processed foods by cooking more at home. It is one of the easiest daily acts we can do to improve our health.

Numerous studies have the same conclusion, one even suggesting that, “Efforts to boost the healthfulness of the US diet should focus on promoting the preparation of healthy foods at home while incorporating limits on time available for cooking”.16

An increase in cooking at home has been shown to relate directly to a decrease in Body Mass Index (BMI),17 and lower BMI decreases the risk other health issues like diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and many types of cancer.18

So what are you waiting for? Put down the fast food and the pre-packaged meals and make your next meal from simple, fresh ingredients.

If you want to read my Masters Thesis in its entirety, you can download it in the Download section. You can also see a shorter slide show here. Enjoy!

References:

1,3,4,14 Monteiro, C. A. (2009). Nutrition and health. The issue is not food, nor nutrients, so much as processing. Public health nutrition, 12(05), 729-731.

2 Pollan, M. (2013). Cooked: A natural history of transformation. Penguin UK.

5,15,16 Smith, S. M. K., Guenther, P. M., Subar, A. F., Kirkpatrick, S. I., & Dodd, K. W. (2010). Americans do not meet federal dietary recommendations. The Journal of nutrition, jn-110.

6,7,8,9 Monteiro, C. A., Levy, R. B., Claro, R. M., Castro, I. R. R. D., & Cannon, G. (2010). A new classification of foods based on the extent and purpose of their processing. Cadernos de saude publica, 26(11), 2039-2049.

10 Moubarac, J. C., Martins, A. P. B., Claro, R. M., Levy, R. B., Cannon, G., & Monteiro, C. A. (2013). Consumption of ultra-processed foods and likely impact on human health. Evidence from Canada. Public health nutrition, 16(12), 2240-2248.

11 Chassaing, B., Koren, O., Goodrich, J., Poole, A., Srinivasan, S., Ley, R., & Gewirtz, A. (2015). Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature14232

12,13 Grossman, E. (2015, February 25). How Emulsifiers Are Messing with Out Guts (and Making Us Fat). Civileats.com.

17 Kolodinsky, J. M., & Goldstein, A. B. (2011). Time use and food pattern influences on obesity. Obesity, 19(12), 2327-2335.

18 Willett, W. C., Koplan, J. P., Nugent, R., Dusenbury, C., Puska, P., & Gaziano, T. A. (2006). Prevention of chronic disease by means of diet and lifestyle changes.

Beets and Pasta (courtesy of Mark Bittman)

Brian

We love our CSA. Every Tuesday we get a basket full of produce, and most of it we know how to cook. Some other items require a bit of research, and some of it I’ve never even heard of (I’m looking at you kohlrabi).

I’ve written about beets beets beets before, but they showed up again in our basket this week and I had to take to the interwebs to figure out something new to do with them.

Thankfully Mark Bittman was one step ahead of us with this recipe on the New York Times Cooking site. It’s quick, easy, delicious and totally different from any pasta I’ve made before.

The recipe is roughly this: 1) grate beets 2) cook in butter 3) add sage, cooked pasta and cheese. That’s it!

beet pasta

 

Grating the beets definitely speeds up their cook time as compared to baking them whole, and the butter and sage give a really rich flavor without investing a lot of time. Also, visually it’s just a beautiful dish.

Fingers crossed that some beets will turn up in our basket this week so we can make this again!

Toledo, Spain: How to Get There and Where to Eat

Brian
Toledo View
Toledo view from the rooftop patio at the Oasis Hostel 

First of all, Toledo, SPAIN. All searches for “Toledo” seem to default to Ohio, which I’m sure is nice(ish) but not the topic for today.

This Semana Santa (i.e. Holy Week, i.e. the week before Easter), we took a trip to Madrid, a city that we both love, and Toledo, a city I visited briefly as a college student, and a new city for Gillian. We’ll talk about Madrid separately, but here are some food and logistics we figured out so hopefully you won’t have to.

Getting there:

Getting there is super easy; you’ve got two main options: bus or train. We opted for the train (AVE or AVANT), which left from Atocha and arrived at the Toledo train station in less than 30 minutes. Round-trip cost per person was 20.60€. The bus will cost you about half the price but will take you three times as long.

Side note: you can purchase train tickets online from renfe.com, but we’ve run into problems when using a non-Spanish credit/debit card. Not having a chip in our card also causes some issues when trying to buy from the machine in the train station. Bottom line: you can pay via PayPal when buying online from renfe.com and sidestep this whole mess.

There are two types of bus that can take you up to the city (I don’t recommend the walk with bags) from the Toledo train station: a red one and a blue one. The red one is a tourist bus that will take you to Plaza Zocodover for 2.50€ and picks up directly outside the exit of the train station (inside the perimeter wall). The blue one is the city bus, and lines 5, 61 and 62 will also take you to Plaza Zocodover, for 1.40€. The bus stop is outside of the perimeter wall to the right as you exit the station.

Where to eat:

As a general rule, we avoid any place that has huge picture-board menus hanging outside, and this made finding a restaurant in Toledo a challenge. We did find a few really great places that are worth mentioning:

The name "Kumera" is not very prominent on the sinage, so keep an eye out as you walk by.
The name “Kumera” is not very prominent on the signage, so keep an eye out as you walk by.

Restaurante Kumera
C/Alfonso X El Sabio 2
Phone: +34 925 25 75 53
www.restaurantekumera.com
Weekdays: 0800-0230
Weekends:1100-0230
Closed December 25, 31 and January 1.

This place has a beautiful outdoor seating area on a street that seems to be off the tourist traffic heavy streets.  They have an amazing mix of tapas (3.00-4.50€), tostas (7.00€), larger plates to share (8.00-13,50€), fish (12.50-15.50€) and meats (12.90-15.50€). A tosta is a large piece of bread with, for example, black olive tapenade spread, roasted red peppers and anchovies (delicious, by the way). Some of the items like cochinillo (roast suckling pig) appear a couple of times on the menu and can be ordered in smaller portions (tapas) or larger entrée portions.

Before taking the train back to Madrid we came by again for lunch and had the Menú del Día. Three courses, included wine and was 12.90€ each.

The menu was:
Primeros: (pick one)

  • Salad with manchego cheese cubes, seasonal fruit and dried fruits vinaigrette
  • Salted gulas (a tiny eels that look like pasta) with shrimp and ajillo (a spicy garlicky olive oil sauce)
  • Fried asparagus with Iberian ham (thinly sliced, cured ham)

Segundos: (pick one)

  • Grilled salmon with vegetables and teriyaki sauce
  • Steak and veggie skewer with blue cheese sauce
  • Lamb chops with garlic and parsley potato sticks

Dessert or Café
(The desserts were admittedly unimpressive, we opted for the coffee)

This place is the perfect combo of quality and price.

Alfileritos 24Alfileritos 24
C/ Alfileritos, 24
Phone: 925 23 96 25
www.alfileritos24.com
1300-1600 Lunch
2000-2330 Dinner

Though they didn’t break the bank on coming up with a name, this place was another great spot to stop. It’s divided into two floors: upstairs is more formal restaurant (reservations seemed to be a thing), and downstairs there are plenty of smaller tables and a separate tapas and wine menu. The latter is what we were looking for.

The menu includes tapas, or “raciones” (5.50- 12.50€), tostas (5€) and wine by the glass or bottle (2.50-3.50€ / 11.20-20.90€). We thought we’d get started with three “raciones,” believing we would ask for more afterwards. This did not happen. We ordered a chicken salad with cheese and a mustard dressing, mushroom croquettes and small pieces of grilled deer meat. It was nearly too much food for two people and incredibly tasty.

Total cost, including two glasses of wine, was 22.30€. Amazing. Also has a lunch Menú del Día for 10.50€ but didn’t get to check this out.

A look at the vertical garden inside.
A look at the vertical garden inside.

Mercado San Agustín
C/ Cuesta del Águila, 1 y 3
Phone: 925 21 58 98 (info)
mercadodesanagustin.com

About two minutes from Plaza Zocodover is an amazing new gastronomic market that opened in September 2014. Spread over its four floors (plus a rooftop terrace) there are 19 different food and beverage establishments that include tapas, Asian fusion, fancy burgers, grilled meats, cakes, wine and cheese shops, you name it. The place is beautiful inside and has really impressive architecture, including a three-story vertical garden. We stopped at the Marisquería y pulpería (shell fish and octopus shop) and got a huge mixed plate of fried calamari, tiny squid, fish in adobo sauce and anchovies that the woman fried up right in front of us (for 10€). Wish we were there on a Wednesday because apparently the burger place does a 4€ special every week.

Next time you’re in Madrid, consider taking a side trip down to Toledo. I haven’t gone into any of the city’s incredible art, history or architecture in this post, mainly because I’d be writing for a very, very long time. We just want to make sure you don’t go hungry when you get there.

Got a place that you found on your trip? Tell us about it! Cause we might find ourselves there again real soon…

Fighting the Hangries: Quick, Healthy Snacks

Brian

It’s five o’clock. We didn’t really have much of a lunch, and anyway, that was hours ago. Dinner is a bit of an elaborate one, so it won’t be ready for some time.

We’ve worked out a color system for these situations, very similar to the DEFCON levels, or the Homeland Security Advisory System, to describe our hunger/angry (hangry) levels. Right now we are both in the orange. Deep Orange.

Something must be done, and thankfully, our past selves put a healthy stock of nonperishable foodstuffs in our cabinet. In this particular case, little crusty bread, canned cooked beans and assorted fishies in cans.

Beans and crusty bread
Crusty Bread and White Beans.
Assorted canned fishies
Assortment of Canned Tuna, Sardines and Clams.

With these, a little olive oil and salt and very little work, we were able to throw together this tasty little snack, and live to fight another day (the hangries, that is).

White Bean Spread Crostini with Clams.
White Bean Spread Crostini with Clams.

Print
Bean Spread Crostini with Canned Fishies

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes

Bean Spread Crostini with Canned Fishies

Ingredients

  • Crusty bread
  • Any kind of pre-cooked beans that are canned or jarred
  • Any kind of canned seafood, like mussels, sardines, clams, tuna etc.
  • Olive oil
  • Salt

Instructions

  1. Take about a cup of beans, rinse them and put them in a small bowl.
  2. With a spoon or other blunt object, mash the beans until they start to break down.
  3. Add a few splashes of olive oil and continue to mash/stir the beans until they become a spreadable paste and salt to taste.
  4. Drain liquid from can of seafood.
  5. Spread beans on crusty bread and top with canned seafood of your choice.
  6. Enjoy!
https://www.travelingtotaste.com/2015/02/25/fighting-the-hangries-quick-healthy-snacks/

Our Go-To Pizza Place in Barcelona: Napoletani DOC

Brian

Before moving to Barcelona, we lived in Naples, Italy for three years and during that time, we ate pizza as if it were our job. We did not chronicle our pizza hobby as this guy did (who ate 365 pizzas over two years), but between the two of us, we did pretty well as connoisseurs in the birthplace of pizza. We ordered pizza from our neighborhood joint so many times that they knew us by name over the phone (this is still one of our proudest achievements to date).

We got spoiled by having amazing Neapolitan pizza at our beck and call all the time. We never had to travel more than a block or two to find a pizza restaurant, and within minutes we could have hot, crispy, oozy, delicious pizza that rarely cost more than 6-8€. It cannot be overstated that Neapolitans are SERIOUS about their pizza, and there are very specific rules for a pizza to be called “Vera Pizza Napoletana.” These rules dictate the diameter of the pizza (no more than 35 cm), the thickness in the center (1/3 cm), where the tomatoes must come from (San Marzano) and so and so forth. There is even an organization that governs the pizza regulations called the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana.

As we were getting ready to leave Naples, we knew that pizza would never be the same. It’s like growing up in Philadelphia and then trying to find a suitable Philly cheese steak anywhere else. We were worried, until we went to one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants called Osteria DOC. The family that runs the restaurant is very sweet, and after telling them our plans to move to Barcelona they said “Oh you need to go to our son’s restaurant there. He has a pizza place.”

HALLELUJAH!

We arrived in Barcelona, and like any normal person, I put on my Napoli jersey and we went to check it out. Let me tell you, it is FANTASTIC.

IMG_20140731_135210

Walking into this place is like walking into a pizza place back in Napoli; huge wood-fire pizza oven, pictures of Mount Vesuvius, as well as jerseys and scarfs from the SSC Napoli soccer team on every wall (they also have a whole page of pizzas named after the soccer players on the menu).

The pizza is spot on, too. The price is slightly higher than what you would find in Naples, but there is absolutely no difference in quality.

Hello beautiful.
Hello beautiful.

Pizzas come in the standard personal size (no more than 35 cm, if you recall) and are best eaten with a knife and fork. They have what seems like an endless list of pizzas (more than 30) which includes the classics (diavola, capricciosa, margarita, etc.) but some unique ones too (Spacca Napoli, for instance: mozzarela, butifarra, mushrooms, parmesan and basil). If you’re going with a group, consider getting the 1/2 meter, or if you’re really hungry, the 1-meter pizza. In both cases, you can choose more than one topping to accompany the metric measurement.

1-meter of pizza.
1-meter of pizza.

They have a considerable list of antipasti, primi and secondi, but our experience with these is limited.

It is, without question, our favorite pizza place in Barcelona. It is also the only one we go to, but I have a hard time believing a better one exists. Maybe someday we’ll branch out, but until then, I’ll have another capricciosa.

Napoletani D.O.C.

Metro: L1 Urgell
Calle Diputación, 101
Barcelona

Phone:+34 93 451 6902
http://www.napoletanidoc.com

How to Help People Cook More Often (AKA the Story of my Masters Thesis, Pt. 1)

Brian

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we like food. We like to cook, we like to eat and we like to break bread with others. We generally can’t have a meal without reminiscing about a meal in the past, or the potential of another in the future. Look at our Instagram accounts on the right side of the page. Is there anything non-consumable in there? And, you know, we have a food blog that you happen to be reading right now.

Food is a daily necessity for all of us, but some people enjoy the experience more than others. For some, thinking of what to eat is torture, and they long for the meal pill from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For others, each step from coming up with the idea to savoring the flavor of a meal is a joy. Lots of us fall somewhere in between, but last year, I decided to explore this a little bit.

A year ago I starting doing a Masters program here in Barcelona, a significant part of which is a thesis on a topic of my choice. I’m not a betting man, but I’ll give you one guess what my topic was. If you said food, you are correct. Extra credit if you guessed cooking, which is more correct.

The reasons I wanted to focus on cooking can be distilled down to exactly two things: health statistics in the US, and Michael Pollan’s book, Cooked.

For one of my presentations I made the slide below compiling some heath statistics from, to name a few, the National Institute of Health, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention ( a .pdf can be found here).

Some Health Statistics on Americans.
Some Health Statistics on Americans.

These numbers gave me pause. For reference, according the US Census Bureau there are about 316 million people in the US. To say that one-third of the adult population in the US is obese (i.e. a Body Mass Index of 30+) is to say that nearly 77 million of our countrymen and woman are dangerously unhealthy and are at high risk things for heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer.

Apart from the health effects and costs for the individual (and family), these statistics call into light the health of our nation. As a guy who was in the Navy for 7+ years, I wonder who will be capable of defending us and protecting us? Who will be our firefighters, police officers, paramedics, emergency services and serve in our armed forces if two-thirds of us are obese or overweight?

The obesity epidemic (that is what they are calling it now) is surely a combination of many factors, but as Michael Pollan puts it in his book, our food, and the industrialization of our food production, is a very big culprit. Corporations, he says, “cook very differently from how people do…They tend to use much more sugar, fat, and salt than people cooking for people do.”

I don’t mean to paint a grim picture because, ultimately this a story of hope. If high levels of sugar, fat and salt from industrial foods are to blame for our health, then all we need to do is to cut down on, or eliminate them.

The easiest and simplest way to do this is to cook for ourselves. Skip the complicated stuff, the calorie counting, the”fat-free,” the fad diets, the cleanses and the deprivation. If we do nothing else other then cook more often, we will be doing a whole lot better than we are today.

I also don’t mean to over-simplify the issue, because there are lots of moving parts and factors involved in making a meal, but I think it’s a good and manageable place to start.

This is what inspires me, and this is what I built my thesis around. More on that coming soon, and I’ll explain how I ended up with #cookingcouplets.

 

 

If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, you would probably also enjoy:

  • Cooked by Michael Pollan. I’ve discussed it here, but the whole book is fascinating. The intro is available for free download if you follow the link above.
  • Fed Up– Katie Couric is one of the executive producers of this documentary, and many big names in health and food make appearances.
  • The Weight of the Nation– an HBO series covering the obesity epidemic. The whole thing is available for viewing online.

UPDATE: I’ve finished writing my thesis! If you want to read it, you can download it in the Download section.  You can also see a shorter slide show here. (29 Mar 2015)

Welcome to our winery. Well, not exactly.

Brian
Not a bad spot, eh?
Not a bad spot, eh?

As Gillian mentioned in her previous post, she grew up in Sonoma, California, so when we head back to visit her family, we have been known to frequent some Sonoma wineries like Ravenswood, Cline, Viansa, etc. Wines in Sonoma are amazing, and they are the first wines we pick when we’re in the States, but when Gillian describes where she is from, people often give her a quizzical look. Then she says  “it’s north of San Francisco” and if necessary, “it’s right next to Napa” and suddenly they understand.

Of all the times we’ve been to her hometown together, we’ve hardly ventured into Napa for any reason at all, much less for some wine tasting, but then we found this place: a winery that bears our last name!

What a fantastic name for a winery.
What a fantastic name for a winery.

We are, unfortunately, not related in any way to the Burgesses of this winery, nor did we really “find” this place. A good friend of ours works at another Napa winery and brought us a fantastic bottle from Burgess Cellars wine a year ago, with the promise that she would arrange a trip to the winery the next time we were in Sonoma. Monica was not messing around, and despite having a 6-week-old infant, she and her husband Jason drove us up to this beautiful winery up on the hill north of St. Helena.

The winery started back in 1972 when a guy named Tom Burgess bought a 1870s-era vineyard. Tom is from Ohio (so definitely no relation to my Brooklyn-born relatives) and cultivated a taste for wine after being stationed in Europe while flying in the Air Force. When he began Burgess Cellars, there were only a handful of wineries in Napa Valley, it being a few years before Napa gained world recognition in 1976 (as depicted in the movie Bottle Shock). The woman pouring wines for us told us how much he paid per acre, and the number so low it made me long for a time machine.

It’s still family-run and a relatively small outfit with three separate vineyards totaling just over 100 acres. Their Cabernet Sauvignons, Syrahs and Merlots are all fantastic and award-winning, and they grow a total of eight different varietals.

The whole family is here!
The whole family is here!

If you find yourself in Napa Valley (and have already been to some Sonoma wineries, of course), check out Burgess Cellars. It’s beautiful and tranquil and a nice change of pace from the wineries on the main drag of St. Helena Highway.

Tastings are done twice a day (10:30 and 2) in small groups and by appointment only, so call ahead or send an email to make a reservation. $10 will get you six different wines, but the fee is waved if you purchase a bottle. Most wines range from $30-80 and we walked away with a bottle of Petit Sirah that made the long journey back the Barcelona with us.

For more info, check out their website, and when you show up, tell them the Burgesses sent you 😉

Tel: 800.752.9463 or 707.963.4766

Slow-Cooked BBQ Pulled Pork

Brian

As Gill mentioned in a previous post, last weekend we went to our friend Claire’s place to put on a barbecue. It had been too long since we had done so, and Claire was kind enough to indulge us.

The recipe I’ve been using for a few years is one I found in ReadyMade Magazine, which unfortunately shut down in 2011. The article was called “How I Learned to Cook Southern-Style Barbecue on my Fire Escape” and was written by food writer, JJ Goode. Mr. Goode’s recipe is adapted from Adam Perry Lang’s book Serious Barbecue (he also happens to do the writing in that book) and is so freakin’ good that I’ve been carting the torn-out, dog-eared article around the world for the last five years.

Despite having made this dish on many occasions before, there were a few firsts this time around. For one, a whole pork shoulder (bone-in) was fairly easy to find here in Barcelona. Our local market here has a number of stands specializing in meat, and I simply walked around until I found the one that only had pork products (I’m not kidding, no other animal was represented under the glass at this place). A whole shoulder was something I had to request and pick up the next day, and 4-5 kilos worth of meat was only about €16.

Second, this was my first attempt at the low-tech version of this recipe. In the past I’ve had a digital meat thermometer as well as a grill with a temperature gauge. These tools obviously make maintaing a grill temp of 250°F and achieving an internal meat temperature of 193°F MUCH easier. This time around, I did not have these things, and the results were still as good as always, so clearly, they are nice to have, but not a requirement.

I won’t bore you with all the details of how to recreate this heavenly pulled pork (you can click through the images above), but I will note a few things that I’ve figured out over the years. I am by no means an expert, but maybe these are useful to you:

  1. Patience and planning are more important than any other skill when it comes to low and slow BBQ. Leave time for salting the meat and leave time for the mustard to tenderize the meat. Above all, you simply cannot rush magic of slow smoking, so grab a book, take a nap and be patient.
  2. Many recipes (including the one I’ve been carting around all these years) call for injecting the meat with various liquids (like apple cider) to keep it moist while it’s cooking. They are nice to do, but by no means required.
  3. The key to slowly cooking the meat is indirect heat, meaning, position the coals so they are never directly below the pork shoulder.
  4. Place an aluminum pan of water inside the grill and make sure it stays full. This water evaporates and the humid heat keeps the pork shoulder from drying out.
  5. Every time you open the grill, you lose precious heat. Remember, with a target temperature of 250°F, you don’t have much to begin with. Open it only when necessary (like adding coals, or water to your pan) but otherwise, let it be. Resist the temptation to gaze longingly at the succulent meat; there will be time for that later.
  6. When the meat is done you should not need a knife at all. You should be able to effortlessly pull out the bones and a couple of forks should be enough to pull the meat apart. If this is not happening, that meat needs to go back on the grill (probably for a few more hours).
  7. Save the bones from the pork shoulder for use in soups, gumbos, red beans and rice, etc. A couple of hours stewing with one of these bones gives virtually anything an amazing smokiness you can only get from the grill. Freeze the bones until you’re ready to use them.
  8. Make your own BBQ sauce. You just spent 6-9 hours cooking the most amazing meat, and you’re going to put nasty, sugar-filled, store-bought sauce on it? Please. Do not do this.

Happy grilling!