Chinese Dumplings, Inspired by Ching-He Huang

These days, the TV has mostly been hijacked for Team Umi Zoomi.   But there is one cooking show that I've been watching when I can:

Easy Chinese: San Francisco, on the Cooking Channel, hosted by Ching-He Huang.  The Taiwanese-born British food writer, food entrepreneur and TV chef visits local restaurants, markets, and farms in my beloved hometown of San Francisco and Bay Area and cooks up quick Chinese-inspired dishes right on location.

I love that it's set in San Francisco, I love that Ching is so perky and that she has a British accent, but mostly I love that it's Chinese food.  Because if there's a cuisine that I sorely miss on the Cleveland east side suburbs, it's Chinese.

Fortunately, a recent episode on dim sum inspired Foodgoat to try his hand at dumplings.  Rather than following her recipe for steamed pork and mushroom dumplings, he winged it on his own as he usually does, using pork, ginger, hoisin sauce, and I don't know what else. 

His faithful helper was also on hand to put them together, and even figured out her own way of sealing the wonton wrappers.

A variety of dipping sauces is half the fun!

All steamed up and delicious.

Princess Goat has her own set of pink chopsticks.

  They came out wonderfully - very, very yummy.  Gngery and moist and delicious and fun to eat.  I'm plotting to buy some bamboo steamers and keep the fridge stocked with wonton wrappers in the hope that I see these dumplings again.  And I'm going to keep that TV show on.   

Valentine's Day Cookies

We celebrated Valentine's Day with our first ever batch of sugar cookies: heart-shaped, pink-frosted, and sugar-sprinkled. 

 

Making the cookies was fun, but the frosting - THAT was the good part.  Not only did it involve "painting" the cookies, but nothing tastes as good to this toddler as straight up sugar.

And by the way, I was very surprised at the ease of making this frosting - powdered sugar mixed with a bit of milk and a drop of food coloring.  Nope, there's no reason to ever, ever buy pre-made frosting for cookies. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

 

The Health Risk of French Press Coffee: Increased Cholesterol

Foodgoat loves his French press coffee. So he was surprised to the see health advice at work saying that a little coffee every day is okay, as long as it wasn't boiled or French press.

What?  What difference would it make, health-wise, if the coffee was boiled or French pressed?

In the 1980s, Scandinavian doctors first noticed that coffee drinkers tended to suffer from high cholesterol more often than those who didn't drink coffee.

While caffeine is the chemical we usually associate with coffee, it's not the caffeine causing this effect.  It is another of the many other other natural compounds in coffee - cafestol.

Cafestol, found in the flavorful coffee oils, is a terpene, a class of organic compound are the main component of essential oils and resin (from which turpentine is produced).

But, look what cafestol does:

1. Cafestol binds to a hormone receptor in the intestine where normally bile acids would bind.  
2. Because this receptor has been hijacked, the breakdown of cholesterol into bile acids slows down.  
3. Cholesterol then backs up.
4. Cholestoerol level goes up.  This  is largely an increase in low density lipoprotein (LDL) (the bad kind) levels and triglyceride levels. High density lipoproteins (HDL) do not appear to be affected.

The impact of cafestol on cholesterol is can be significant - cafestol is routinely described as the most potent cholesterol-elevating compound known in the human diet.

One study found that 10 milligrams of cafestol (or four 5-ounce cups of French-press coffee) may raise cholesterol by 8 to 10 percent in four weeks. 

And of course, cholesterol can be deposited in artery walls, increasing the risk for heart disease.

Why Brewing Method Matters
Because cafestol is in the oils of coffee, though, using a paper filter (as in drip coffee brews) captures much of the oil and results in very low levels of cafestol.  So cholesterol is unimpacted. 

In unfiltered brewing methods, including French press, boiled methods such as Turkish coffee, and espresso, the oils remain in your coffee.  It gives better flavor, but also leaves all the cafestol in it, so your cholestorol gets the full impact.  (Note, in Scandanavia, where they first noticed the cafestol effect, the typical coffee brewing method is a boiled method).  Cafetol is highest in Turkish coffee type brews, next highest is French press, followed by espresso.

So, does this mean French press coffee is unhealthy?  I don't think so.  The impact on cholesterol is significant, but still is less than the influence of other factors, including:

• Eating foods high in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol.
• Being overweight.
• Not being active every day.
• Smoking.

Since I'm not concerned about my cholesterol level or overall risk of heart disease,  I'm just going to go ahead and keep drinking my French press coffee.

Things I've Learned About Non-Dairy Creamer

As I've said, I drink my coffee black. 

Once, in an effort to improve upon a terrible cup of coffee provided to me somewhere, I tried adding the non-dairy creamer, Coffee Mate I think it was, to it.  Big mistake.  It made bad black coffee even worse.

• It's called non-dairy whitener, or coffee whitener, in other parts of the world (such as the UK, it looks like) so that you don't think it's really cream.  Really, it's artificial cream with vegetable oil.
• They may not be completely non-dairy: most of them contain casein, which comes from milk, in order to make it, well, milky.  Which matters if you're allergic to milk (rather than lactose intolerant) or vegan.
• You can make a fireball with it!  One of the ingredients can become flammable when dispersed. Tested and confirmed by Mythbusters. 
• It generally seems to be made up of things that are not food - edible, maybe, but not food.  Basically, it's high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, casein, artificial flavoring and colors, and phosphates.  There are rundowns here and here.  
• It's not good for you.  The worst offender in the ingredient list is the partially hydrogenated oil, also know as trans fat.  The coffee creamer container may say "No trans fat!" on it, but labelling rules allow you to say a product as 0 grams of trans fat as long as it has 0.5 grams or less trans fat per serving.  But if you end up using more than one serving of creamer, you could end up getting quite a lot of trans fat.  And no amount of trans fat is good for you.  
• It comes in a lot of flavors.  A LOT.  International Delight alone has 22 flavors on their website.  Is creaminess not enough of an addition to one's cup of coffee?  
• The worst sounding flavor:  Cinnabon.  I can't think of anything worse than adding the flavor of horrible, airport/mall cinnamon rolls into my coffee cup.

Why I Don't Like French Roast Coffee

As a result of roasting our own coffee beans, I have learned more about coffee and the properties of the various roast types.  For example, French roast.   I have tried many versions and have never found one that I liked - one that I wanted to go back to and drink again.  Why is that?

French roast is coffee has been roasted for longer time, well into the  "second crack"stage, so what you get is a a very dark roast.  At the French roast stage, the beans are very oily and almost black.

As you roast beans, the flavors change.  At lighter roasts, the beans will have more of its "origin flavor" which result from its variety and growing conditions and locations.  Here's where you can taste the differences between the Sumatran and Guatamalan and the Ethiopian beans. 

Keep roasting them long enough, and the specific flavors of the bean are increasingly replaced by mostly carbony flavors.  At the French roast stage, it doesn't matter so much where the beans came from and or what kind they were or how well they were grown, because all those distinctive elements are overpowered by the charcoal taste. 

And so, French roasts tasted kind of burnt.  

Turns out I am not the only one who prefers the lighter roasts. 

My favorite part of this Wall Street Journal article comes at the end, because it echoes what Foodgoat complained about to me this very morning:

"Because quality beans, properly roasted retain more natural sweetness, Mr. Wells says that he won't offer sugar when he opens his first café in February. He adds he has served thousands of coffees at events and has never offered sugar, to the consternation of some consumers.

Many consumers erroneously associate dark-roasted coffee with "strong" coffee, Mr. Howell says. "Strength is a matter of how much coffee to water," he says. While some drinkers enjoy the flavorful jolt of a dark coffee, "light roast rewards waiting a little bit, like letting a wine open after it has been poured," and can taste even better as it cools, Mr. Howell says. Light roasts are best enjoyed without cream or sugar because they can be naturally sweet and not bitter, he adds."

Why do I know that French roasts tastes burnt?  Because I drink coffee black.  No sugar.  No cream. 

Lighter roasts don't need sugar or cream to taste good; they don't have the bitter, burnt flavor that needs to be covered up with sweeteners.

They let the coffee taste delicious just as they are.