Why you want to make this: Spare Ribs With Olives, Lemon and Rosemary from Mark Bittman at the NYTimes.com

This: Featured Recipe: Spare Ribs With Olives, Lemon and Rosemary - Bitten Blog - NYTimes.com, is delicious. It seems quintessentially Mediterranean to me, with lemons, olives, and garlic. It's simple to make, but the result is sophisticated. It's the kind of recipe that you make over and over again.

I agree with Mark Bittman: you want to use good olives, as well as good olive oil. When I made it, I used a combination of the black oil-cured olives and the big and fat calamata olives. Use your favourite, as long as they are fresh and tasty. I used dried rosemary -- rosemary dries well -- and I went with a teaspoon of chili flakes (use more if you like more heat). I also used water instead of wine: the flavour from the lemon is quite strong and most wines may be overpowered. That said, a wine that would compliment the lemon could provide a very rich sauce. I used a richer, golden chardonnay to counterbalance the acid from the lemon. A good reisling or a Soave or even a fuller rose might work. For that matter, a really good cold glass of water would be perfect.

Another thing I did was substitute some of the ribs with smaller pieces of chicken. I am glad I did this. The combination of chicken and ribs on my plate made the dish even better. I had chicken legs, but I think the next time I would go with chicken thighs (because they are smaller and richer in flavour). The chicken is thoroughly infused with the flavour of the sauce: the left over chicken would make a superb sandwich or a great addition to a salad with a lemon or creamy dressing. Plus I think the chicken adds to the wonderful sauce that results. If you wanted a real stew, you could poach some fish or shellfish towards the end of cooking and end up with a paella-like dish. But part of the charm of this dish is its simplicity, so less may be more.

I also took some of the liquid, added some water, and used it as the base for some couscous that I had along side the meat. I would recommend you make the couscous on the dry side: there was lots of sauce at the end of cooking the ribs and chicken, and a drier couscous could soak that up. That said, I think a nice bowl of rice or even bread would be a great way to use up all that lemony good sauce.

Needless to say, I recommend you make this. Another great thing about this recipe is that come spring or fall, or anytime in between, this will be a good dish to prepare and enjoy.

(Great shot of olives from jurvetson's photostream on flickr.com).

The problem with the chart: why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac

This chart is getting alot of publicity on blogs that I read:

But as this post points out, Why a [U.S.] Big Mac costs less than a salad : Contrarian, it is "chart junk". Specifically, why is a pyramid used? At best it should be a bar. But using a pyramid, you can overemphasize subsidies to meat and dairy and visually distort the actual subsidy. That isn't to deny that meat and daily don't get alot of subsidies. But there should be no need to change the chart to represent that.

I would also argue that a salad in Burger King -- where I eat salads -- does not cost more than a Whopper (roughly equivalent to a Big Mac). So I don't know if the comparison holds. A salad in a restaurant other than a fast food restaurant will cost more than a Big Mac. But that has to do with alot more than meat and dairy subsidies.

That all said, I think it would be ideal if people ate more vegetables.

Bernie's BBQ "cheat" sauce

I am going to write more about Jamie's book, but I was searching for something else and came across this recipe that I use often and refer to as my BBQ "cheat" sauce. It's actually a Chatelaine Recipe for Chili-molasses-rubbed ribs. I love this sauce, and it is easy to make. I call it a cheat sauce because you start off with a store BBQ sauce and then spice it up with theme and chili powder and salt and make it sticky and sweet with molasses (I get the fancy and not the cooking molasses...the former is much nicer in taste, I find.)

Sometimes I will make a big batch and use it for all my BBQ needs, be they pork, beef or even chicken. (I don't think it would go with fish or lamb, but it would go well with hardier vegetables).

The BBQ sauce I start with is usually a chipotle variety. But if you prefer plain, hickory, jalepeno...well, pick whatever you like. While I wouldn't recommend a really expensive BBQ sauce for the base, don't get a really cheap one either.

Jamie's Pancakes and my own (plus crepes)

Because I tend to ease into things, I started with the recipe for pancakes. It's a fairly easy recipe, but here are some tips you might find helpful.

If you are truly a novice cook, somethings to keep in mind if you haven't made pancakes or anything with flour and liquid ingredients is this: mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients seperately, then mix them together. It is also easier most time to gradually add the mixed dry ingredients to the mixed wet ingredients.

After you mix the wet and dry ingredients, let it sit for a bit in order to rise. During this time, you can let you pan get hot.

I find for whatever reason, my first pancake is never cooked as dark as I would like it to be. I likely don't let the pan get hot enough. Keep it in mind, since I often don't serve my first pancake and you might find the same thing.

In my case, I had self-rising flour, but I had had it for awhile and I think it went somewhat flat.

I like this recipe, but if I had my choice, I would go with a traditional recipe I use of :

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1-1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted (I think this is optional, though...I never use it)

I prefer this for a few reasons:

1. I don't care much for self-rising flour. It's basically flour with baking powder and salt. Better just to have those three ingredients. Having all-purpose flour is much handier and useful for other things. And of course you should always have salt.
2. Sugar, milk and eggs are also things I always have around.
3. I can basically go from making pancakes to crepes with mostly the same ingredients
   

Crepes consist of

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon salad oil (e.g., corn oil)

There's no sugar, baking powder or salt, and there's less flour and more milk and alot more eggs. This is why they can take richer and are thinner and why they don't rise and appear cakelike as the pancake does. You should mix them up in a blender or use a mixer or even a good hand mixing, then let them rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Or mix them the night before, cover them and stick them in the fridge, and then make them in the morning.

If all this sounds like alot for you, stick to Jamie's recipe. It's good, and a good way to get into the book.

Notes on measurements and ingredients for Canadians, or what's a lug and where can I get chiles?

Most of the ingredients for the recipes in the book should be easy to get for most Canadians. What you might have a problem with at the beginning though was non-metric measurements. For example, what is 7 oz (ounces) of meat equal to in grams? I couldn't find food measured in non-metric any more, other than when it said 1 lb. (1 pound).

Based on some research, the conversion you want to keep in mind is:

100 g = 3.5 oz
200 g = 7 oz
454 g = 16 oz = 1 lb

Jamie also mentions a "couple of lugs" of oil. I am guessing he is talking about the sound of oil as it leaves the olive oil bottle (it makes a "lug" sound when it leaves). If you aren't comfortable with that measurement, here's two things you can do:

1. Replace "one lug" with a tablespoon (tbsp) of the oil required
2. Add a bit of oil to your pan at a time until it coats the surface you are cooking on. A small surface will need less oil, generally.

Finally, lots of his recipes call for a fresh red chile. This is not a red bell pepper, which is sweeter, but a hot pepper, like the ones listed here.
(Ignore the photo: it's of bell peppers!) They should be finger long and thin, and likely medium hot. I had a hard time finding these in the bigger grocery stores, but did find them in smaller green grocers, especially ones that have other Asian produce like lemongrass.

These chiles are great: they add a great red colour to your dish, and also provide a nice touch of heat to your dish. If you can't find them, you could still get some colour and heat by using jalepenos instead. Or you could try dried chili flakes, though you lose out on the nice colour. You could even try tabasco sauce or a bit of some other hot sauce. All of those are easy to find. But if you can get red chilis, I highly recommend them. They are cheap, colourful, and nicely hot. (Yes, you could leave out the hot stuff all together, but I think that would be a shame.

About this blog

I started this blog for three reasons.




The first reason is this book: Jamie's Food Revolution. I love to cook and I love cookbooks. But I had stopped buying cookbooks for sometime because I found that after awhile, I bought them excitedly, only to cook little if anything from them once I got them home. However this one, with the subtitle: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals, strongly appealed to me since the food I like to make is simple, affordable and delicious. (At least I like to think is all three of those.) Once I browsed through it, and learned more about Jamie's mission to essentially get people to cook better so that they can live better, I was really interested. I think that is a great mission, and I would like to support that. Finally, as I examined the recipes, I thought: I am going to get this book.

Since then, I have been making quite a number of these recipes, despite the book being aimed at a UK audience. Since he wants us to Pass It On, I thought the best way I could do that is with a blog. Plus, I wanted to Canadian-ize things a bit, so I am going to write about the recipes from a Canadian perspective. I hope by doing this, I can provide some value to Canadians interested in taking up the book.



The second reason has to do with politics. While this is chiefly a cookbook, it is also a bit of a political book (in a small 'p' sense of the word). After all, the original UK title is Jamie's Ministry of Food, a title that combines politics and food in one. I thought of the second reason and the need to address the politics of food somewhat because on some of the political blogs that I read, there is opposition to what this book is trying to do. I'd like to try to address that in this blog (though it will be mostly about the food).

Finally, the third reason is that I like to blog and I like to cook and I like to eat! This is a great way to enjoy doing all three.

P.S. Whenever I refer to a recipe being Jamie's, unless otherwise noted, it will be a recipe from this book.

Thanks for reading this.