Salt shaker, courtesy of Flickr user Leonid_Mamchenkov

If a ban proposed by Brooklyn assemblyman Felix Ortiz passes, New York chefs will be banned from using salt in food preparation in all restaurants. The bill states: “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises.” Ortiz suggests a $1,000 fine for each violation

The New York Daily News led off their coverage with this: “If State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has his way, the only salt added to your meal will come from the chef’s tears.” The New York Times covered the story on their blog. The Baltimore Sun pointed out that not only does salt add flavor, it also affects the chemical reactions that happen during baking (as well as the texture of baked goods). Max Fischer at The Atlantic guessed that Ortiz never actually wanted the ban to pass but rather wanted to get media attention and make other restrictions seem reasonable. He definitely got the media attention.

Ortiz told the Albany Times Union that he was inspired by his father who “used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.” Under Ortiz’s salt ban, the public would still be allowed to add salt at the table. I have to admit that if I got a batch of unsalted fries, I would add just as much, if not more, salt than the cooks in the kitchen would have.

Ortiz did issue a clarification later in the week: “My intention for this legislation was to prohibit the use of salt as an additive to meals. If salt is a functional component of the recipe, by all means, it should be included. But, when we have meals prepared by restaurants that pile unnecessary amounts of salt, we have a problem.”

New York is not new to bans. New York City passed a ban on trans fat in 2006. For a column in the Chicago Tribune, Mary Schmich talked to Nicole Pederson, executive chef at C-House in Chicago, who compared the ban to the trans fat ban with one important distinction: “Trans fat is bad in every single way… But salt is not bad in every single way.”

A Mediterranean-influenced soup with chickpeas, tomatoes, spinach and tahini. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

Last weekend, I challenged myself to cook without recipes for the rest of the week. I had been feeling bogged down by the amount of time I was spending researching recipes and planning menus and shopping lists. I wanted to test my creativity and ability, and push myself to be more spontaneous. I went to the supermarket Friday without a list and without a plan.

The results: a mixed bag, but more positive than negative. The good news was that I know more about cooking than I gave myself credit for. Everything I made was at least edible, and some of it was really good.

I started strong on Sunday with a Mediterranean-influenced soup, using ingredients that I knew went well together but hadn’t necessarily seen combined in this way. I sautéed some chopped onion and garlic, then added a can of chickpeas, some leftover canned chopped tomatoes, chicken broth, a little sherry and some spices. After it was heated I stirred in a spoonful of tahini, which gave it a little creaminess and a delicious flavor. I threw in some chopped fresh spinach until it was just cooked, then blended about 3/4 of the soup so that it would still have some chunks. Finally, I added some leftover cooked rice and let it heat through. The soup was filling and flavorful, and I had just enough left over to bring for lunch the next day.

On Monday, I decided to adapt a macaroni and cheese dish I’ve tried before. In order to cut down on fat and sneak in some vegetables, I had once tried a recipe from, I believe, Food & Wine magazine that replaced part of the cheese with pureed carrot. It was good, but slightly sweet, so I wanted to try the same idea with a different vegetable—cauliflower. I steamed and pureed it with some milk, then mixed it with shredded extra sharp cheddar and jack cheese and a little ground mustard, paprika and cayenne pepper. Then I stirred it into the cooked macaroni, added some chopped tomatoes and chopped green chilis, sprinkled more shredded cheese and Parmesan on top and baked until it looked done. Another success: it wouldn’t beat out a good creamy full-fat version, but it was surprisingly satisfying. I considered the fact that my partner, who doesn’t watch calories, voluntarily finished off the leftovers the next day a good sign.

On Tuesday the problem with my laissez-faire grocery shopping became clear. That is usually my partner’s night to cook, since I work on the blog then. Although he has recently taken up baking (a hobby I wholeheartedly support), his cooking repertoire is mostly limited to pasta or pizza (using pre-made crust). I had bought the crust but failed to check to see if we had mozzarella left. We didn’t. He finished the leftover mac-and-cheese, and I heated up some boxed soup.

Wednesday I made chicken fajitas. Again, my lack of a shopping list came back to haunt me—no lime juice for a marinade. I improvised with some lemon juice and what seemed like a good idea at the time: the juice from a jar of Spanish olives. I won’t say that it was bad, but I wouldn’t use it again. A side of chopped mango and avocado sprinkled with cayenne pepper and lemon juice (again, lime would have been better) somewhat redeemed the meal.

Thursday was my final night of winging it. On the excellent advice of some of our commenters, I decided to riff on a recipe I have made before, acorn squash stuffed with vegetables. The recipe I usually follow calls for chopped carrots, onions, red bell pepper and celery, sautéed with garlic, ginger, soy sauce and white wine, and topped with shredded cheese. I decided to use the rest of the cauliflower, plus red bell pepper and onions, left out the ginger and used balsamic vinegar instead of soy sauce. I also added a bit of cayenne pepper (few things can’t be improved with a little heat, in my opinion). The flavor was good, but without consulting the recipe I didn’t know how long to bake it. I should have let the squash cook all the way through before putting the filling and cheese in; the squash was slightly undercooked and by the time I realized my mistake it was too late because the cheese was already browned.

Overall, I am pretty happy with how things came out. I would make both the soup and the macaroni and cheese again, and it was liberating, and confidence-building, to improvise each day. I saved money and was less wasteful because I didn’t have a list of specific ingredients I had to buy for recipes; instead, I used what I had available, including leftovers.

On the other hand, at times I felt a little lost without the guidance of a recipe, especially for knowing how long to cook things and at what temperature. From now on, I’ll try to use recipes as a starting point, rather than following them slavishly.

Sally Lunn's museum in Bath, England. Courtesy Flickr user wallyg

Though the language was old-fashioned, the recipes for treats like “ginger-bread cakes,” “pear pye” and “apple pasties” (turnovers) sounded pretty familiar. “Shrewsbury cakes” didn’t ring a bell, until the notes added by modern authors explained that these are simply sugar cookies.

But the enigmatic “Sally Lunn” was translated into modern English as a recipe for, well, Sally Lunn. It seems to be a type of cake or bread made with yeast, flour, sugar, shortening, milk, eggs and salt. (I haven’t tried making it yet because I don’t actually own any cake or bread pans. But read on—apparently these can be formed as buns, too.)

Who was Sally Lunn?

Well, that’s hard to say. She might have been a real woman, a French-born pastry cook named Solange Luyon who fled to England as a refugee in the late 17th-century. A modern-day bakery and museum called Sally Lunn’s still stands on the site in Bath where she is said to have baked and sold a distinctive type of bun:

Legend has it that from her home in France, where the Protestant Huguenots were being cruelly persecuted, came young Sally Lunn to find employment with a baker who rented premises in Lilliput Alley. She sold his wares in the street, but when her skill at baking Brioche was discovered she no doubt spent for more time in the bakery itself. Sally Lunn’s Buns were a tremendous success; others tried hard to copy them, but her skill with the rich, soft and delicate dough inspired customers specifically to request the Sally Lunn.

But other stories abound. A 19th-century British book says the buns in question were invented by a French refugee named Madame de Narbonne, who established a bakery in Chelsea, England sometime around 1800. She specialized in “a particular type of tea cake” which became quite popular in local households, and Sally Lunn was the name of the Scotch maidservant who delivered it.

Or perhaps there was no Sally Lunn, and the baked buns got their name from their appearance, round and contrasting (the bottom side being dark from baking), like the sun and the moon: Soleil et lune, in French, transformed by cockney British accents into something more like “Solly Lun.”

On the flipside, another story claims that the recipe originated in Britain and was appropriated by a visiting French chef named Marie Antoine Careme, who soon “invented” a slightly adapted version of the sweet bread, called it a solilemme.

Whoever invented Sally Lunn bread in its various forms, it seems clear that British colonists enjoyed this food tradition enough to carry it across an ocean, where it continued to evolve in form and recipe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. An 1892 newspaper article claims that George Washington was so fond of Sally Lunn that it became known as “Washington’s breakfast bread” or “federal bread.”

Personally, I don’t think the plain, round versions pictured on the Sally Lunn’s bakery Web site look all that enticing. I’m more tempted by the bundt-cake version of Sally Lunn, topped with cardamom sugar, on the Brooklyn Farmhouse blog, and the Sally Lunn herbed rolls featured on the Food Channel.

Have you ever tried a Sally Lunn?

Here’s the circa 1770 recipe which was reprinted in the Williamsburg cookbook:

Beat four eggs well; then melt a large Tablespoonful of Butter, put it in a Teacup of warm Water, and pour it to the Eggs with a Teaspoon of Salt and a Teacup of Yeast (this means Potato Yeast); beat in a Quart of Flour making the Batter stiff enough for a Spoon to stand in. Put it to rise before the Fire the Night before. Beat it over in the Morning, grease your Cake-mould and put it in Time enough to rise before baking. Should you want it for Supper, make it up at 10:00 o’Clock in the Morning in the Winter and 12: o’Clock in the Summer.

Spanish olive oil and bread at DC's Jaleo restaurant, courtesy of Flickr user Kevin H.

Although people usually associate olive oil most closely with Italy, Spain is the world’s largest producer of the stuff. In fact, chances are good that, if you have tasted olive oil, you have tasted olive oil from Spain.

A few days ago I attended a presentation on Spanish agricultural products at a language school and fair-trade store in upstate New York where I used to take Spanish lessons. The presenter, Thilo Ullman-Zahn, imports artisanal olive oil from Spain, which we got to sample, along with some Manchego cheese and Rioja wine.

Frankly, I was more eager to try the Rioja and Manchego—both of which were delicious—than the olive oil, but it was interesting to learn about it. And, as it turned out, interesting to taste. We sampled two types of oil from an estate in southwestern Spain: Marqués de Valdueza extra virgin olive oil, which is best for dipping, drizzling or using in dressings; and Merula, the estate’s all-purpose extra-virgin olive oil, intended for cooking. We didn’t use any fancy techniques, like aspiration, that professional tasters employ—we just dipped in a spoon and slurped. But the difference between the two oils was easily discernible, even by a novice like me. The Merula, blended to be more robust so that the flavor can withstand heat, was bland initially, then “blossomed” with fruity olive taste. The Marqués de Valdueza oil, Ullman-Zahn told us, is blended for aroma, so that its fragrance and flavor are immediately apparent. The oils are made from a blend of four varieties of olives, in different combinations, each with different characteristics: arbequina is a little sour with a flavor that fades quickly; hojiblanca is “fruity, sweet and peppery”; morisca is sweet, but difficult to grow; and picual has the most robust flavor.

In Spain, he said, it has become fashionable in the last 20 years or so to eat toasted bread drizzled with olive oil for breakfast—not a bad idea, with a good-quality, flavorful oil, since it is considered a healthier fat than, say, butter or cream cheese.

Italy doesn’t grow nearly enough olives to satisfy domestic demand, much less feed the international appetite for “Italian” olive oil—which probably has more to do with perception than its inherent superiority. So it imports oil from other countries, including Spain, processes and packages it, and re-exports it with an “imported from Italy” mark. Sure enough, I went home and looked at my bottle of Filippo Berio extra virgin olive oil in the cupboard. In the top left corner of the label it said, “Imported from Italy,” but on the back it said, “Packed in Italy with select extra virgin olive oils from Italy, Spain, Greece and Tunisia.”

Until July 2009, the European Union didn’t require olive oil labels to state the country of origin of the olives used in the product; if it was packaged in Italy, that was good enough. Under the new rules, though, intended to combat fraud in the industry, labels have to identify the origin; if it’s a blend, the label must specify whether it comes from EU or non-EU countries.

Of course, this only takes care of the most obvious form of misrepresentation in the business—olive oil fraud has been a problem since at least Ancient Greece. It probably won’t stop those who try to pass off hazelnut or sunflower oil as olive oil, using devious methods—like adding chlorophyll and flavorings—recounted in a 2007 article in The New Yorker.

However, it will bring olive oil closer to the way other agricultural products, such as wine, are labeled, and might even give the other oil-producing countries a little more recognition.

Jars full of pickled goodies, courtesy of Flickr user Jo Peattie

Salty and crunchy cucumber pickles have been a mainstay in American refrigerators for decades. But The Daily Beast recently listed pickling as one of its top trends for 2010. And the trend isn’t just for cucumbers—you can pickle just about anything. At the restaurant where I work, we serve pickled red onion on our burgers and pickled beets in our salads.

Pickling is by no means a new technique. Vegetables, fruit and even meats can be preserved using the pickling process to keep them good for months after their peak. Different cultures have their favorite pickle fodder. Korea has kimchi, Scandinavia pickled herring and Italy giardiniera. There are two standard pickling methods: the salt-brining method, which results in a shelf-stable pickle, and the refrigerator, or quick, pickle method. The latter pickles are created using a vinegar solution and must, as the name suggests, be stored in the refrigerator.

When I began searching for recipes, I came across the great Food in Jars blog that focuses on, among other jar-based endeavors, pickles. Although I didn’t end up choosing a recipe from here, mostly because I wanted an in-season quick pickle, I learned a great deal about the basics. For instance, when pickling vegetables, it’s important to use a vinegar that has at least 5 percent acidity. In the brine, this can be diluted to one part vinegar, one part water.

When I visited the Spotted Pig in New York City on my pig-eating journey, I ate pickled pears in an appetizer and really wanted to try some at home. I remembered the pickling episode of “Good Eats” and the pickled summer fruit recipe. In this recipe, Alton Brown uses Bartlett pears and plums. Since neither of those are in season right now, I went with the sweeter Comice pear, which is in season, and cut out the plum altogether. I kept the rest of the recipe the same with lemon slices and slivered fresh ginger.

Since these were quick pickles and would be stored in the refrigerator, I didn’t have to worry about sterilizing the can. I cooked up the vinegar mixture and poured it over the pear, lemon and ginger already packed into a recycled pasta sauce jar. I let the whole thing cool on the counter for a bit and put it into the refrigerator for two days. (The recipe suggests two days to a week in the refrigerator.)

After 48 hours of marinating, I opened the jar and was surprised at how sweet the pears and brine smelled. I pulled out a pear and bit in. The pear slice still had quite a bit of crunch to it, and the vinegar had soaked into the flesh. I got notes of lemon and ginger from the rest of the ingredients. While they’re pretty good now, I want to wait and see what they taste like after a week in the brine. I already have plans to use the leftover liquid as a vinaigrette for a salad.

Are all these cookbooks a help or a hindrance? Photograph by Lisa Bramen

Most home cooks consult recipes at least some of the time, whether for inspiration or instruction. Others seem to be able to look at the ingredients in their pantries and conjure a delicious and innovative meal without so much as cracking a cookbook.

I fit squarely within the former category. Other than a handful of simple dishes that I have learned how to make by memory, I almost always look to recipes both for ideas of what to cook and for an explanation of how to prepare it. Part of the reason is that I am relatively new to cooking: until a few years ago I usually lived alone, so it rarely seemed worthwhile to make anything more complicated than some pasta, a salad or a stir-fry. I consider my collection of cookbooks (and great online resources, like Epicurious, Chow and myrecipes) a low-budget cooking school.

But a few months ago I moved to a house in the country, where the supermarket is a 25-minute drive away. This means I can go shopping only once a week, so I have to plan out the menu in advance—a time-consuming task since I seem to feel compelled to look at 1,000 recipes to come up with the five or six I want to make that week. It also means I can’t be spontaneous. I get frustrated when my partner decides he wants to go out for a beer and wings on a Sunday, when I have planned to make a soup that would take too long to make on a weeknight, and which I had intended to take leftovers of for lunches during the work week.

Even though I am trying new recipes all the time, I feel like I’m in a rut, overly reliant on recipes. I’m a creative person in other areas of my life; why don’t I trust myself to be creative in the kitchen?

I wasn’t always so timid about striking out on my own in the kitchen. I remember rifling through the cupboards as a child, taste-testing—apple cider vinegar and unsweetened chocolate were shocking disappointments—and occasionally concocting recipes from them. OK, chocolate “mousse”—made from Cool Whip and Nestle Quik chocolate powder (before it became Nesquik)—may not have been haute cuisine, but the peanut butter muffins I devised from various ingredients I had seen my mother use came out surprisingly muffin-like, considering I had no idea how much of each ingredient to use. Surely, with a little more experience under my belt, I could improve on these early experiments.

Therefore, I have challenged myself to forgo recipes for a week, with the goal of being more creative, more spontaneous and free from hours of planning. I went to the market Friday without a list, which was liberating in itself. I’m hoping I bought the right amount of food, since I spent $20-40 less than usual. I’ll report back on Friday about how it went.

Does anyone have suggestions for how I should proceed?

There were three main themes, each with its own set of panelists: Food safety, food security/hunger, and “the way we eat” (consumer behavior; nutrition and obesity issues). That’s too much for one blog post, obviously, so I’ll take one at a time.

Everyone who touches food has a stake in its safety. Image courtesy Flickr user saschaaa

As I’ve written before, food safety is a complicated issue, but not necessarily a controversial one—everyone wants it. Consumers don’t want pathogens in their food; and neither do the farmers, corporations, retailers and restaurants that grow and sell that food. Yet there are some 76 million cases of food-related illness in the United States each year, racking up, according to one recent study, an estimated $152 billion in health-care costs, and killing at least 5,000 people. Outbreaks of food poisoning hit the headlines so often that in our online poll last October, nearly 90 percent of you said you worry about food safety.

Is there any good news?

Well, according to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, “big change is possible” right now, as consumers and industry have begun to agree on reforms, and the Obama administration has made the issue a priority. She hopes to soon see the first significant update to the country’s food safety laws since the 1930s. The Food Safety Enhancement Act was passed by the House last summer, and a similar bill is now on the Senate’s plate, though it seems to have been pushed aside by the health care reform debate.

Among other things, this legislation would give the FDA the power to order mandatory recalls of contaminated products—a power that many people assume the agency already has, when in fact the agency can only request that companies issue such recalls voluntarily.

And then, of course, there’s the issue of funding. Monitoring and enforcing safety has become increasingly expensive as the food system has grown more globalized, and government inspectors can’t afford to be everywhere at once. Hamburg was blunt about this, ending her optimistic speech with a caveat: “In order to do this, we will need adequate resources. And it’s a sad truth that over the years, we have not had those.”

The money problem could be eased in part by a provision in the new legislation allowing the FDA to charge a $500 annual registration fee to each food facility under its purview. As the Atlantic’s Sara Rubin noted in her own summary of the event, that pill isn’t too difficult to swallow for most corporations, but it could cause very small businesses to choke.

Hamburg also emphasized the idea of a “farm to table” approach to preventing food-related illness, holding everyone from the grower to the consumer accountable: “Everyone who touches food shares responsibility for its safety,” she said.

As if on cue, this morning’s newspaper added another loud note to the chorus of evidence that this problem is not going away on its own: salmonella in a ubiquitous flavor-enhancing product prompted what is expected to be one of the biggest food recalls in the nation’s history.

Nutrition label, courtesy of Flickr user teamperks

If you’re like one of my college roommates, who would probably eat tar if it was labeled “low-carb,” you might want to think again before you grab a product based on what it says on the box.

Today, as the Washington Post reported, the Food and Drug Administration sent letters to 17 food producers because the companies were touting health benefits on their products that were misleading, contrary to FDA guidelines, or simply not true.

The FDA gave companies 15 days to come up with a plan to correct the labels or face possible consequences, such as suspension of their product.

Some products on the list include:

• Diamond Food, Inc.’s Diamond of California Shelled Walnuts, whose label claims the Omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts can fight mental illnesses, lower cholesterol and protect against some heart diseases and cancers; and Pom Inc.’s POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice, which claims to lower hypertension and reduce or prevent certain kinds of cancers and diseases. The FDA says such health claims are reserved for drugs.

• Nestle’s Juicy Juice Brain Development Fruit Juice Beverage (Apple), which claims it “helps support brain development in children under two years old”—another statement the FDA says only drug companies can make.

• Nestle’s Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Orange Tangerine, and Juicy Juice All-Natural 100% Juice Grape, whose labels imply the products are 100% real juice, the FDA says, when neither pure orange tangerine nor pure grape juice are the products’ main ingredients.

• Ken’s Foods Inc. for their “Healthy Options” salad dressings, which the FDA says must be “low fat” (3 grams of fat for 50 grams of food) in order to have a “healthy” label. The Healthy Options Parmesan & Peppercorn dressing, which has 6 g of fat per 30 grams of food; the Sweet Vidalia Onion Vinaigrette, which has 4 grams of fat per 30 grams of food; and the
  Raspberry Walnut Dressing, which contains 3 grams of fat per 30 g of food, all violate this rule.

• Gorton’s Fish Fillets and Mrs. Smith’s Coconut Custard pie are both labeled as “0 trans fat” but do not disclose that there are high amounts of regular and saturated fat, as the FDA requires.

Some companies have plans to change the labels, but POM Inc. plans to challenge the FDA, according to the Post.

The recent campaign is one of the largest by the FDA in at least a decade, according to the Center for Science in Public Interest (CSPI), though last May the FDA also targeted General Mills for its labeling of Cheerios, which were claimed to lower cholesterol and heart disease.

Just a few months before the FDA’s campaign, CSPI released its own report on food labeling and sent it to the FDA. The report targeted health claims, which were the focus of the new FDA campaign, but CSPI has also asked the FDA to increase its requirements for food labeling (pdf). This would include adding the label “high” and highlighting in red ink certain ingredients—added sugars, trans fat, saturated fat, cholesterol or sodium—if they accounted for 20 percent or more of the recommended daily allowance. The CSPI also urged the FDA to require companies to disclose what percentage of a products’ grains are whole grains and how much caffeine is in the product, as well as other changes that they claim would make food labels easier to read (and understand).

There are probably plenty more food makers out there who aren’t being completely honest about their products. Until the FDA can get all of them to clean up their labeling, I think I’ll follow advice my great-grandmother once gave me (about food and life) when grocery shopping: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Trinidad Vineyards in Chile, courtesy of Flickr user Dear Garou

On Saturday, one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history struck Chile, killing more than 700 people and destroying the homes and livelihoods of many more. In addition to donating to relief organizations, another way to help some are suggesting is to buy Chilean products, including wine, one of its biggest exports.

Chile is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of wine (after France, Italy, Spain and Australia), and its wine industry has been badly affected by the 8.8 quake. Damage is still being assessed, and it’s too early to know what the extent of the long-term impact on the wine industry will be. But James Molesworth, an editor for Wine Spectator magazine, has been tweeting reports from wineries in the quake zone, and early indications are that many have lost inventory, buildings, or both (but, thankfully, so far, no loss of life among employees has been reported). One witness described the smell of wine along the roads in front of wineries.

Power outages, road closures and general upheaval will further complicate this season’s harvest, which, since it is late summer in the southern hemisphere, was scheduled to begin soon. As Eric Asimov writes on the New York Times wine blog The Pour, even if the grapes can be harvested, wineries that have sustained damage may not have the necessary resources to produce wine.

Even before the earthquake, Chilean winemakers were having a bad year. As the Los Angeles Times reported just two weeks ago, the wine industry there has been suffering the effects of the global economic crisis. Although foreigners have been drinking more Chilean wine than ever, they have been shifting to cheaper wines just as Chilean producers were trying to make inroads into the fine wine category.

Chile, which has a topography and climate similar to California’s in many ways, has been producing wine for more than 500 years. Only since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the late 1980s, though, has Chile become a force in the international wine trade, establishing a reputation for good-quality, affordable wines.

Of course, climate and topography are not the only similarities between Chile and California—both are prone to earthquakes. Although the famous wine regions of Napa and Sonoma counties mostly escaped damage from the 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the lesser-known wineries in the Santa Cruz mountains, close to the epicenter, were not so fortunate; many buildings and inventories were lost. Silver Mountain Winery was completely destroyed, but within five years had rebuilt and was back on its feet.

Here’s hoping that the Chilean wineries, and the country as a whole, are able to do the same.

Grading samples of maple syrup, courtesy Flickr user Glass_House

It’s hard to predict exact dates for maple sugaring season because, as this farmer explains, it all depends on the weather. March usually casts the strongest spell, a combination of warm spring days and still-freezing nights that wakes up the sap in sugar maples while keeping their buds in bed.

Weather also influences the sugar content of the sap, which affects the amount and color of the final product. Syrup is classified by letter grades—A, B, and C, with several subcategories in between—from lightest to darkest. The lightest, “grade A fancy,” tends to fetch the highest prices, but they’re all good.

So good, in fact, that although I set out to write only a “five ways to eat” post, I’ve decided to give you an entire alphabet of maple recipe ideas! (Humor me. I’m from Vermont; maple madness is endemic.)

A: Asparagus with maple-tahini dressing.

B: Braised Brussels sprouts in maple-mustard glaze.

C:  Caramel corn, maple-style. Or cupcakes frosted with maple-cream cheese.

D. Maple-roasted duck, with cherry compote.

E. Even eggnog tastes better with maple.

F. Fish, as in maple-glazed salmon or pan-seared maple trout.

G. Ginger-maple cocktail. (Or ginger-maple anything, really.)

H. Hot wings with maple-chipotle sauce. Sweet plus spicy = mmm.

I.  If you can’t get sugar on snow (see “S”), maple ice cream is the next best thing. (Which is kind of like saying you should “settle” for a date with Hugh Jackman if George Clooney is unavailable.)

J. Jicama salad with chicory, pecans and maple dressing.

K. Kabocha squash and celery root soup with maple syrup and brown butter.

L. Legumes. Baked beans get all the glory, but lentils also work well with maple.

M. Maple mashes. As in mashed squash, rutabaga, or sweet potatoes and bourbon.

N. Nuts, candy-coated.

O. Oatmeal with maple syrup and cream was my favorite pre-skiing breakfast as a kid. Oats and maple also pair nicely in scones, cookies or even beer.

P. Pomegranate pancakes! Or pork. Maple-dijon glazed ham, maple-marinated pork roulade, maple pork chops—go whole hog, and top it off with a maple-bacon cupcake.

Q. Quince, poached and then baked with maple syrup, cloves and anise.

R. Rhubarb desserts, like apple-rhubarb crumble or maple rhubarb pie.

S. Sugar on Snow. I’ve already raved about the fabulous candy that forms when heat-thickened maple syrup meets a cold dish of snow (or crushed ice, if you’re nervous about eating snow).

T. Turnips, roasted with maple and cardamom.

U. Upside-down cake with pears and maple syrup.

V. Maple vinaigrette tossed with baby spinach, candied pecans and blue cheese crumbles makes an easy, yet elegant salad.

W. Well, waffles with syrup, obviously. Runner-up: Maple wine.

X. Um…. Xanthan gum in gluten-free pancakes, maybe?

Y. Yams with maple syrup and pecans.

Z. Zucchini, sauteed with a splash of syrup, or baked into maple zucchini bread.

Coconut shrimp, courtesy of Flickr user allikazoo

The coconut has long been a staple of cuisine in tropical places. As the trend toward Eastern flavors picks up here in the States, coconut has shown up in many flavor forecast lists for 2010.

The coconut is one of the most useful plants in the world. Some cultures use almost every part of the tree from the leaves to the water inside of the coconut fruit. In fact, the water is sterile, and was used as a intravenous solution in a pinch during World War II. The flesh of the coconut fruit, the fluid inside the coconut, coconut milk (made of liquid squeezed from the coconut flesh) and even the root of the palm, known as hearts of palm, are all eaten. Here are a few ways to enjoy the different parts of the coconut:

1. Batter: Think coconut-breaded shrimp. Use flakes of coconut flesh to coat shrimp and bake or fry. You can also coat other seafood, like tilapia, or try chicken with dried coconut flakes.

2. Salad: Hearts of palm are harvested from the root of a palm tree. Doing this kills the entire tree, so a salad made with the root was once called a “millionaire’s salad.” Today, rather than using coconut palms or other varities, most heart of palm comes from the peach palm—the only palm varietal not to die after its root has been harvested. Hearts of palm have a subtle flavor similar to asparagus or artichoke. Paula Deen has a recipe for a salad with spinach, strawberry and hearts of palm that I can’t wait to try.

3. Curry: Coconut milk is the base for many Thai curries. I make a creamy red curry using red curry paste, a can of coconut milk, chicken and sweet potato. For more information, and some actual recipes, Serious Eats as a nice breakdown of curry type with recipes.

4. Substitute for dairy: While I don’t keep kosher, recipes using coconut milk instead of dairy milk to follow kosher laws are intriguing. Take this Sweet Potato Coconut Crumble from Gourmet Kosher Cooking or these coconut milk scalloped potatoes. Coconut milk can also serve as the base of non-dairy ice creams for those lactose intolerant ice cream lovers. Grist recently reviewed non-dairy ice cream options, and the coconut milk varieties won.

5. Piña Colada: Some snow from the great snow storm of 2010 is still lingering on the ground here in D.C., but it’s already March and spring will be here soon. When it starts to warm up, fix yourself a piña colada and pretend you’re on a tropical beach somewhere. This popular cocktail is made from rum, pineapple juice and cream of coconut, which is derived from coconut milk.

Fugu nigiri, courtesy of Flickr user selva

Aside from foraging wild mushrooms without a good guide book, or having tea with a former Russian spy, one of the most potentially dangerous meals you can have is fugu, the highly toxic puffer fish that can cause paralysis or death but is considered a delicacy in Japan. There, specialized restaurants employ licensed chefs who have undergone years of training in how to prepare the fish and remove the poison. Still, a few people die every year from fugu poisoning, mostly at the hands of inexperienced cooks.

The 18th-century Pacific explorer Captain James Cook described the effects of what is believed to be mild fugu poisoning in his journals. Also in the 1700s, the Japanese poet Yosa Buson wrote a haiku about heartbreak that is sort of the Asian version of the kids’ song about eating worms:

I cannot see her tonight.
I have to give her up
So I will eat fugu.

It is believed that the fish’s poison comes from the accumulation of the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin in the bacteria and smaller sea life it ingests. The toxin is concentrated mostly in the liver, gonads and skin. The level of toxicity is seasonal, so fugu is traditionally served in Japan only from October to March. As little as one to two milligrams of the toxin can be fatal. The first symptoms of poisoning can begin anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours after ingestion. Numbness begins in the lips and tongue, followed by nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, then spreading paralysis and a complete shutdown of the central nervous system. There is no known antidote, and death—which is the final result in about half of all fugu poisoning cases—usually occurs within four to six hours.

Sounds delicious, right? Well, to some people, that lethal potential, however slight, is part of the fish’s allure.

But now the thrill may be gone. In 2004, researchers at Nagasaki University succeeded in breeding non-toxic puffer fish by separating them from other marine life and feeding them a purified diet. And Optima Foods, in the Ehime prefecture of Japan, has recently begun selling farmed non-poisonous fugu to restaurants. Already an expensive fish, the safer version is even pricier because of the work- and technology-intensive farming process; the fish are raised inland, in fresh water with salt and minerals added.

All this is great for diners, like me, who consider a delicious meal thrilling enough. But it doesn’t look like the certified fugu chefs will be out of a job anytime soon. As one Japanese chef told the Telegraph, “It’s obviously more than a little exciting to go to a restaurant knowing that it might be the last meal that you ever eat. Where is the enjoyment in eating something that has no risk in it?”

Easy-Bakes aren’t the only unconventional ovens on my radar lately. During the recent blizzards in DC, a coworker whose power went out cooked his dinner over a cluster of tealights! Well, “cooked” and “dinner” are loose terms; he heated up some frozen White Castle cheeseburgers in tinfoil. But still rather impressive.

Candle-cooked cheeseburgers, by Erik Washam

There was another option he didn’t consider (although it probably would have required too much shoveling to be worth the effort): Cooking in his car. I blogged about this concept a long time ago, but I had forgotten about my plan to try it until I listened to NPR’s The Splendid Table a couple of weeks ago. The episode included an interview with the author of “Manifold Destiny,” a jokey-but-authentic guide to cooking various tinfoil-wrapped feasts using only the heat of one’s car engine. (Sorry to say that I probably still won’t be trying this anytime soon, as I no longer have my own car, and my husband’s response to the notion of messing with anything under the hood of our perpetually persnickety Dodge Neon was, well, cool.)

If you have a fireplace at home, that’s another type of oven you may have been ignoring. The Washington Post’s food section included a fascinating piece about fireplace cooking last week, in which the author experimented with cooking and baking in her home fireplace using simple tools like a steel-framed Tuscan grill, string and bricks. Chicken turned out well; cake…not so much.

You could even put a solar oven in your backyard, as my colleague Bruce Hathaway has done—basic models cost under $150, and the fuel is free.

I’ve also read that you can steam fish in a dishwasher, though I’ve never tried it.

Maybe such things intrigue me more than the average person because I don’t have a conventional oven myself. As I mentioned last fall, we rent an apartment that’s lovely in many ways but lacks an oven—there’s only a four-burner range, with a microwave above it that doubles as a hot-air convection oven.

Many of you responded at the time that you could never live without an oven, but to be honest, it’s much less inconvenient than I’d expected. We make everything from lasagna to popovers, albeit in small batches, and can broil even smaller batches in the toaster oven. Still, now I’m thinking an Easy-Bake or two might make a nice addition to the living room…heck, even Oprah’s personal chef, Art Smith, has used one.

Have you tried any of these things, or other alternatives to conventional ovens? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments field.

Atom cookie from Not So Humble Pie

The self-described “typical nerdy biological anthropologist turned stay at home mom” who writes the blog Not So Humble Pie has channeled her scientific interests into the creation of a whole curriculum of amusing and delicious-looking science-themed baked goods—like the Jumbo “Hostess” Binary Cupcakes, which have ones and zeros in place of frosting curlicues, and gingerbread people in containment suits, who “laugh in the face of ebola and crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever!”

Binary "Hostess" Cupcakes courtesy of Not So Humble Pie

OK, so they aren’t necessarily all 100-percent scientifically accurate. The author admits to taking a little artistic license—after all, the limits of frosting decoration, unlike the universe, are finite. But anything that gets people excited about science and learning is probably a good thing. What student wouldn’t want to memorize the periodic table of elements if she got to eat each one as she mastered it? Mmm, rubidium. We’re talking frosted cookie form here, of course. It would be counterproductive (i.e. potentially fatal) to eat straight-up arsenic or beryllium.

It’s not just the kiddies who could stand to brush up on their science, either. For the grown-ups, I found some themed cocktails that would be perfect for a gathering of astrophysicists, or just a science-fiction convention social. There’s the Black Hole, made with black sambuca and club soda on the rocks. Or the Bailey’s Comet, containing (in addition to the obvious Irish cream) butterscotch schnapps, Goldschlager and sambuca. Goldschlager, as you may know, is the cinnamon-flavored schnapps with flakes of real gold leaf in it, which leads me to another line of scientific inquiry—namely, is it safe to ingest the Au on the periodic table? Yes, according to the Straight Dope—it passes through the body undigested. And Snopes debunks the silly myth that the gold flakes cause tiny cuts in the stomach to make the alcohol absorb faster.

For the neurobiologists, try a Brain Hemorrhage, a concoction of Bailey’s, strawberry schnapps and grenadine that sounds as gross-tasting as it looks.

Finally, for the computer geeks (which means most of us these days), check out this charming low-tech (stop-motion and cardboard) video that imagines how you could bake cookies using Photoshop.

Ever tried something for the first time and immediately felt like smacking yourself in the forehead?

Sometimes, that’s because you realize it was a bad idea—for example, sticking your tongue on an icy flagpole. But sometimes, that’s because you realize that you’ve been missing out for years on something wonderful. That’s how I felt when I finally tasted the Vietnamese noodle soup called pho a couple of weeks ago.

We have a delightful feature about pho in the March issue of Smithsonian, cleverly reported from Hanoi by veteran food writer Mimi Sheraton (we also have a great video about Hanoi’s pho scene embedded here). As she notes, although most Americans pronounce the word the way it looks (”foe”), the Vietnamese pronunciation “is somewhere between ‘fuh‘ and ‘few‘, almost like the French feu, for fire.”

Sheraton explains that pho typically involves “slim and slippery rice noodles” served in a steaming broth of beef (pho bo) or chicken (pho ga), seasoned with things like fish sauce, shallots, ginger, cinnamon, chilies, basil, coriander and lime. Depending on the type, it may feature slivers of beef, tofu, vegetables, or egg, and is often served with a condiment platter of fresh herbs and mung bean sprouts to add as you eat.

“It is that contrast of seasonings—sweet and spicy, salty, sour and bitter, hot and cool—that makes this simple soup so intriguing to the palate,” she writes.

After reading proofs of Sheraton’s article, several of the editors here found ourselves hankering for a pho lunch (even though, as Sheraton learned, pho is traditionally a breakfast or late-night food in Vietnam), so we headed to a place called Pho 14 in DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood.

I felt like a bit of a bumpkin for admitting that it was my first time tasting pho, but as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one. Most of us approached the menu with the same curious confusion, wondering aloud as we perused nearly two dozen options: Large or regular? Does “soft tendon” taste better than it sounds? And what the heck is “bible tripe?”

I chose the pho chay, a vegetarian broth featuring bright, crunchy broccoli and carrots, meaty mushrooms and tofu amid the tender noodles; a few squirts of spicy sriracha made it perfect. Most of my colleagues went for variations on beef pho. No one was eager to stomach the bible tripe (what, with all the puns in Sheraton’s piece, I can’t get away with one?) after hearing a description of it (thanks to someone’s iPhone), but the eye of round, brisket and skirt flank were popular.

There was plenty of slurping and splashing as we dove in with chopsticks and shallow porcelain spoons, squeezing limes and tearing basil with our hands—followed by groans of “oh, I can’t finish all this!” We agreed that it was much more fun than an ordinary lunch, and a steal at less than $10 a bowl.