Smithsonian.com

Orange roughy, aka the slimehead, courtesy of Flickr user greg.turner

The National Museum of Natural History’s Sant Ocean Hall last week hosted the “Real Cost Cafe,” an interactive performance about sustainable seafood. The child-friendly program originated at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, and was adapted by Smithsonian’s Discovery Theater. Three segments assessed the environmental issues at stake for a different kind of fish, ultimately tallying the fish’s “real cost” to marine ecosystems and to human health.

I knew little about the subject prior to seeing the performance, but Rachel Crayfish and Bubba (the show’s hosts, who were dressed in chef’s hats and fishing gear) taught me about the sustainability issues at stake for some of the United States’ favorite seafood: orange roughy, shrimp and salmon.

What is “sustainable” seafood? NMNH fish biologist Carole Baldwin—who has written a cookbook titled One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish—sustainable seafood includes fish and shellfish harvested in a way that doesn’t threaten the future of the particular species. The four primary factors that pose such a threat are “bycatch” (marine life that gets caught in fishing equipment by accident), overfishing, habitat loss and pollution.

Orange Roughy: This white fish, also known as the “slimehead,” matures remarkably late in life, around age 20. These fish can live as long as 100 years, so you might be eating a fish that’s older than your grandmother! Unfortunately, many young orange roughy that are caught have not yet had a chance to reproduce, making the species particularly susceptible to overfishing. According to the handy Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch card Bubba handed out at the performance, orange roughy is on the list of fish to avoid. This is not only due to overfishing, but also the harmful contaminants such as mercury these fish can contain. Pacific halibut is a much safer choice, and has a fairly comparable taste, at least according to our pals Rachel and Bubba.

Shrimp: One shrimp looks just like the next to me, but apparently not all are created equal when it comes to sustainability. The shrimp industry is one big contributor to the bycatch problem, often throwing away two pounds of unwanted marine species for every pound of shrimp caught. Shrimp farms are less affected by bycatch than the wild-caught shrimp industry is, but building shrimp farms often requires the destruction of rich marine ecosystems like mangrove forests. What’s the lesser of the evils? Rachel and Bubba say that the United States and Canada have fairly strict regulations for shrimp farms that limit environmental destruction. U.S. or Canada-farmed shrimp make the “green” list for the best seafood choices on my Seafood Watch card.

Salmon: I was already aware that eating farmed salmon was a no-no, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. As it turns out, farmed salmon can have higher levels of contaminants in their systems due to their diets. Furthermore, to my surprise, several different species are often sold as salmon, and some are better for you than others. Alaska wild salmon seems to be the most sustainable option, with Washington wild salmon coming in second.

Sometimes, says Rachel Crayfish, the “real cost” of seafood can be hard to swallow. Who’s going to pay this “seafood bill,” she and Bubba ask? The next generation, of course, some of whom were sitting, wide-eyed, with me in the Sant Ocean Hall on Saturday.

We asked you for stories about college food in this month’s Inviting Writing, and it’s been fun to read the responses so far. If you haven’t submitted yours yet, there’s still time—please send it to FoodandThink@gmail.com by September 3rd.

Let’s start off with this one from Eve Bohakel Lee, a Louisville, Kentucky-based writer and editor who apparently shared my fondness for marshmallow goo as a college freshman…

Alchemy in a Bowl
By Eve Bohakel Lee

In my freshman year at Indiana University, I became acquainted with two things I’d had scant experience with previously: Rice Krispy Treats and chemistry. Both took place in the cafeteria of my dorm, and were interdependent.

Apparently, eating Rice Krispy treats with plastic utensils doesn't work. Photo courtesy of Flickr user elorgwhee.

As a kid, Rice Krispy Treats were something that you had at someone else’s house. I had the impression that they must have been very difficult to make, because my mother, possessing merely rudimentary cooking skills, never made them. And I’d barely survived chemistry class in high school, so would not have consciously sought it out if not for the promise of something closer to alchemy.

It was fall—a magical time of year in Bloomington—so I should have expected something wondrous, but I was unprepared to find it in the cafeteria at eight o’clock on a Friday morning. A girl at my table had a sweet-smelling concoction in front of her, which she was eating from a ceramic bowl with a spoon. The mysterious compound looked delicious and irresistibly messy.

As I silently speculated about the identity of her decadent dish, staring at its lumps and goo, she took one more heaping teaspoonful, looked up at me, and said, “Rice Krispy Treats.”

How? How had I missed that going through line?

“Come here,” she said, rising and licking her spoon one last time. “I’ll show you.”

I followed her to the cereal station. She scooped a bit of Rice Krispies into a new bowl, topped it with four or five butter pats and scattered a layer of tiny marshmallows from the hot cocoa dispenser on top of it. She tossed another butter pat on top before putting the bowl into the microwave.

“How long do you cook it for?” I asked.

“Until the door blows off,” she joked, then glanced through the door and stopped the oven after about 20 seconds. She pulled her sleeves over her hands and removed a bubbling mini-cauldron of melted goo.

“Stir this up,” she said, as she produced a spoon and stuck it into the bowl. I obeyed.

“And voila! Rice Krispy Treats,” my new friend said, proud as a mad scientist announcing her latest invention.

She carried the bowl back to our table and I gingerly dug in and raised the spoon to my mouth.

I wasn’t thinking that the treat wasn’t perfectly square, or that the bowl would require an hourlong soaking to restore it to its original shine, or even that the confection had the ability to pull out multiple fillings in one mouthful.

I tasted it, and the feeling of power to do what I wanted shot through me. I was a grown-up. I could make Rice Krispy Treats whenever I wanted—even at breakfast. Magic.

Beer is a nice drink served...warm? Photo courtesy of Flickr user nagzi

Years ago, before I ever traveled overseas, I remember hearing that English people drink warm beer. This sounded disgusting, of course, because the only “warm” beer I had ever tasted was the dregs of a cup of Miller or Budweiser from a college keg party that I had drunk too slowly. A few years later I spent some time in the United Kingdom, where I discovered, lo and behold, that their pubs were not devoid of refrigeration. In fact, beers were served at various temperatures according to what type they were. If you ordered a lager, it came chilled, but if you ordered an ale, it was only cool. Some brews were served at room temperature, but never what I would actually call warm.

Americans, including me, have become far more beer-savvy in the last two decades since the explosion of microbreweries has introduced varieties beyond mass-produced—and often nearly flavorless—lager. But the Brits-drink-warm-beer myth (or, more accurately, the all-beer-should-be-ice cold myth) seems to have survived, as President Obama’s June exchange with British Prime Minister David Cameron (which I saw on The Daily Show) reminded me. At the G-20 meeting in Canada, Obama and Cameron exchanged beers from their respective countries, and Obama joked that Cameron should drink the Goose Island 312 wheat beer cold. Cameron retorted that Obama could drink his gift, Hobgoblin, cold but that he probably wouldn’t like it.

A dark ale or stout served ice cold just doesn’t taste as flavorful as it does at a slightly higher temperature. The reason for this is the same as why white wines are usually served chilled, while red wines aren’t. Put simply, the volatile compounds associated with certain flavors or odors can be activated or deactivated through heating or cooling. If a flavor is desirable, it needs to be served at a temperature high enough to be detected; conversely, an undesirable flavor can sometimes be suppressed through chilling. So, if you over-chill a beer or wine that is meant to be served cool or at room temperature, you could be killing its complexity.

A chart at Wine.com gives general guidelines for the ideal serving temperatures for different kinds of wines. It explains that a red wine served too warm will taste more alcoholic and even vinegary, too cold and the bite of the tannic acid will overwhelm the other flavors. White wines need to be chilled enough to avoid tasting overly alcoholic and “flabby” but not so much that they lose flavor altogether.

A similar chart for beer, at RealBeer.com, recommends wheat beers and lagers be served at 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (which, incidentally, is still warmer than where most people keep their home refrigerators) and dark ales, including porters and stouts, at 55 to 60 degrees.

Alcoholic beverages aren’t the only things that taste best at particular temperatures. Some foods, especially fruits, can lose their flavor if refrigerated. Tomatoes are one of the examples cited most often—refrigeration turns off the enzyme system that helps produce fresh tomato aroma and flavor.

Of course, taste is subjective. If you ask for your red wine on the rocks you might give the sommelier a heart attack—but you’re the one who has to drink it.

Okra’s a strange little vegetable, the kind of thing you might not guess was edible if no one told you. Its prickly skin can sting your fingers, and slicing into it reveals little more than seeds and slime. I admit, if okra hadn’t been included in our CSA share these past few weeks, I would probably still be unacquainted with it—and I’m still not exactly in love.

But hey, I’m from New England. Okra’s a beloved staple in other regions, such as the American South, parts of Africa and the Mediterranean. According to the book “Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa,” by Fran Osseo-Asare:

“Okra is another indigenous West African vegetable that has spread globally. The English word ‘okra’ is derived from the Twi word ‘nkuruma’ and is famous in the United States as the thickening agent in the gumbo stews of Louisiana. The French word for okra is ‘gombo,’ which, like gumbo, derives from a Bantu word…When cut, it is…much valued for its mucilaginous or sticky properties.”

Okra, courtesy Flickr user FootosVanRobin

The okra plant, Abelmoschus esculentus, is a cousin of cotton in the mallow family. (Its hibiscus-like flowers inspired its original scientific name Hibiscus esculentus, but botanists later renamed it.) It’s a good source of vitamin C and fiber, as well as glutathione, an antioxidant with anticarcinogenic properties. Not all varieties have those sharp hairs on the outside of the pods, but if present, their sting can be quickly neutralized by hot water.

Here are a few ways to prepare okra:

1. Fried. Dredged in egg and cornmeal and fried to a golden crisp, it’s a “simple Southern classic.” Add a twist by making it curried.

2. Gumbo, of course. Try it with seafood, chicken and sausage, or no meat at all; there are a zillion recipes out there. If you’re short on time, see Cooking for Engineers‘ version.

3. Oven-roasted. It can be simply flavored with olive oil, salt and pepper, or smothered with spices. Maybe, like Cooking Books blogger Andrea promises, this spicy version will make an okra believer out of me yet.

4. Stew. If you’re not crazy about okra on its own, try disguising it with stronger flavors and textures, as in this tomato-based lamb and okra stew or bamya, an Egyptian stew made with beef broth.

5. Pickles. Or, “wickles,” (wicked sweet and spicy pickles) as this blogger puts it. Spicy seems to be popular—Alton Brown’s recipe uses dried chilis and black peppercorns, and even Ladybird Johnson’s pickled okra recipe included hot peppers.

Do you like okra? If so, what’s your favorite way to make it?

Plate of seitan, courtesy of Flickr user veganwarrior

Like Amanda, I became a vegetarian in my teens, but in my case it had nothing to do with a white lie; basically, I just thought meat was “gross” and realized I was old enough to make my own food choices. And although I now eat fish and some meat, I still like—even prefer, in some cases—”fake meat” or meat substitutes, including tofu, TVP (texturized vegetable protein) and Quorn.

But my favorite of all? In the words of the old Saturday Night Live character, the Church Lady, “Could it be… SATAN???” Well, no, actually, it’s seitan (pronounced SAY-tan, not SAYT-in, though I can’t hear the word without thinking about its evil-sounding near-homonym).

Seitan is flavored wheat gluten, the protein portion of wheat that gives bread dough its elastic quality. It has been used as a meat substitute for centuries in China and Japan, where it was developed by vegetarian Buddhist monks.

Unlike tofu, which isn’t fooling anyone, seitan has the surprising ability to mimic what I consider the good qualities of meat—the flavor, heartiness and ability absorb sauces—without the aspects I find unappealing—especially bits of fat and cartilage. It can be convincing to the point of distressing vegetarians; I was always suspicious of the vegetable gyozas I used to order from my neighborhood Japanese restaurant, though I now know that they contained seitan, not stealth chicken or pork. Even many tofu-haters, like my husband, enjoy seitan.

Seitan is made by mixing wheat flour with water to a doughy consistency, then rinsing it repeatedly until the starches wash away, leaving just the stringy gluten behind. It is then cooked in soy sauce, water and other flavorings. Seitan is sold in many natural-foods and Asian markets, or you can try making it yourself. If making it from scratch is too much effort, you can start with vital wheat gluten, a powder that already has the starch removed, instead of flour.

Seitan is higher in protein than tofu—in fact it’s as high in protein as steak, without the saturated fat and cholesterol (and, obviously, without the ethical issues for those who avoid meat out of concern for animals or the environment). In general it’s also less processed than some other meat substitutes, including frozen veggie burgers, which have recently come under scrutiny for containing soybeans treated with the chemical hexane.

The one serious drawback of seitan is that it is, obviously, not the food for people with wheat allergies or gluten sensitivity, such as celiac disease.

For those who can tolerate it, though, seitan can replace meat in all kinds of recipes. Most recently, I had it in a mock duck curry and, at a Chinese restaurant, in General Tso’s Seitan. But it isn’t limited to Asian dishes: it can also fill in for beef in Seitan Bourguinonne or even Irish Guinness Stew.