A little bird gave me the recipe

Doesn't that salt & peeper shaker (March 31, 2009 post) look like a Twitter bird? Well, there is a twitterer (I guess that's what they're called) named @twecipe. The idea is that you send @twecipe a list of ingredients and he/she/it sends you back a full recipe using those ingredients.

If you know anything about Twitter, then you know that all messages are restricted to 140 characters. I don't think it would be hard to do a list of ingredients in such a small space, but what about a full recipe? Let's see.

This comes in at 137 characters (spaces are counted):
Marinate flank steak in A-1/broil, thinly slice. Salsa: dice 2 nectarines, mince small red onion, lime juice, minced jalapeno + cilantro.

A little loose, but I bet most people could cook from that.

Salt & peeper shaker

So just because I ranted about salt doesn't mean that I don't like it. After all, salt gives us the opportunity to dress up our tables with impossibly cute gadgets like this Salt & Peeper Shaker.

If you turn this little guy's head to the right, his blue eyes turn white and you can shake salt out of his beak. If you turns his head the other way, his eyes turn black and you'll get pepper.

It's $11.50 from bibelot.

The alphabet challenge

One of the things I enjoy most about cooking is figuring out the puzzle. I like nothing better than opening the refrigerator and seeing if I can concoct something really tasty using the random ingredients that happen to be there.

So when I posted the entry about the Eatphabet it got me to thinking that it would be fun to come up with a recipe that only used foods starting with the letters in my first name.

I made up some rules for myself: 1) I could include the first initial of my last name so I would have 5 ingredients to play with and 2) oil, salt and pepper wouldn't count.

I've already come up with 10 ideas and as soon as I try them out I'll publish them (assuming they work).

If anyone cares to join me in this challenge (using your own name, of course), please feel free to send me your results--pictures, too--and I'll post them.

To salt or not to salt

Don't get me started on salt. Let's just say that most people eat too much and food manufacturers enable them. The thing with salt is that the more you eat, the more your palate wants. Luckily, that works in reverse, too. If you start cutting back on salt you will discover that you're satisfied by a lot less.

Now to the science. The general wisdom on salt and health is that it can cause problems for your blood pressure, but really only if you are what is considered "salt sensitive." The catch is that salt sensitivity is not easily or obviously measurable, so to play it safe doctors recommend that everyone, especially anyone with risk factors for hypertension, cut back.

A recent study by the University of Kentucky Medical School and a medical college in China illustrates the relationship between salt and hypertension. The researchers reported that high levels of salt in the blood can suppress the activity of an enzyme called nitric oxide synthase (NOS). The significance of this is that NOS is indirectly reponsible for signals to the muscles surrounding blood vessels to relax. An UNrelaxed muscle can constrict the blood vessel and increase blood pressure.

So the lesson here is that if you--or anyone in your family--tends toward high blood pressure, then you should start cutting back on the salt (not just salt added at the table, but the sodium in canned goods). You will find that soon your tastebuds won't notice that you've cut back.

Why, you ask, is there a picture of an ear of corn here? Well, there are a couple of foods that most people are adamant about sprinkling with salt, and corn on the cob is right at the top of the list. So here's my tip (and I've converted a bunch of hard-core salt lovers to this method): Serve the corn with wedges of lime. Smoosh it over the corn before you add any butter...though the corn-lime combination is pretty good without butter, but one battle at a time, right?

My name spells a weird dinner

On flickr there is a photo gallery called Eatphabet, which is the entire alphabet spelled out with food. The author, Luiza P., says of the gallery: "This project was conceived as a way to document my eating habits and routine, through the creation of an alphabet."

I thought it would be interesting to see what my meal would be if I used her photographs to spell my name. So here's what I'm having for dinner (in the order of the letters in my name):

• Chinese pork chops and chinese rice
• Green salad, stuffed red peppers, goat cheese and a mixture of carrots, ricotta and nuts on whole wheat bread
  
• Turnovers (pasteles)
• Scrambled eggs and ham

Darn. I guess I'll have to change my name if I want dessert.

Braised Chicken with Sherry & Almonds

Sherry is a fortified wine from Spain: specifically an area near the town of Jerez in the southern province of Cadiz. Since the 1930s, the name Sherry has been legally protected (like the name Champagne), and any vintner who labels a wine sherry that isn't produced in the Jerez region is subject to prosecution.

Fortified wines (which include Port, Madeira and Marsala) are those wines that have had a stronger alcohol--usually grape brandy--added to them. They can have a consistent style and level of sweetness, or there can be a range from dry to sweet. This is true of sherry, which ranges from very dry (fino or manzanilla) to a dessert-style wine often labeled Cream Sherry. In between are amontillado (you may remember the cask of Edgar Allan Poe fame) and oloroso.

For cooking purposes (in the recipe below), you'll be fine with a dry sherry, and in fact you can buy the cheaper American versions of sherry that are required to call themselves "American sherry." Just don't buy something in the supermarket called cooking sherry, because it has salt added to it and is dreadful.

Braised Chicken with Sherry & Almonds
Serve the chicken and sauce over rice, barley, pasta or even slices of toasted whole wheat baguette.

2 red bell peppers, cut lengthwise into flat panels
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon paprika, preferably smoked
1 teaspoon salt
2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken (breast and/or thigh)
5 teaspoons olive oil
1 cup dry sherry
2 cans (14-1/2 ounces each) diced tomatoes
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/3 cup chopped parsley

1. Preheat the broiler. Broil the bell pepper pieces, skin-side up, 4 inches from the heat for 12 minutes or until the skin is charred. Turn the pepper pieces skin-side down on the broiler pan to cool. When cool enough to handle, peel and cut into 1/2-inch-wide slices.
2. Cut the chicken into large serving pieces (in thirds for breasts, in half for thighs). In a shallow bowl, combine the flour, paprika and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt. Dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour.
3. In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook until golden brown on all sides, about 5 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a plate.
4. Add the sherry to the pan and cook at a boil, scraping up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan, for 2 minutes to reduce the liquid.
5. Add the tomatoes, roasted peppers, almonds, red pepper flakes and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 5 minutes (or longer if you want; this is to break the tomatoes down a bit).
6. Return the chicken to the pan, cover and cook until the chicken is cooked through but still juicy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the parsley.

Makes 4 to 6 servings