When It Comes To Crunch

I need crunch. Every day. Crunchy... crispy... - how do I love thee? Let me (re)count some of the ways.

• potato chips, of course. It is true – you can’t eat just one – which is why they are almost never in my house. (Occasional exceptions are made for Covered Bridge Potato Chips from New Brunswick - home of 60 covered bridges, including Hartland - the world’s longest). 
• perfect French Fries – and the award goes to Jamie Kennedy who recently ended an era in the Toronto food scene with the closing of Gilead. In related interviews, he recounts that his fries were inspired by his time in Paris. His two sons continue the tradition every Saturday at the impressive and unique Evergreen Brickworks Market.
• pork crackling, most notably the little piece that appears in every porchetta sandwich at Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg. Yes, “burg”, not “bord” – named as such since the indescribably wonderful flea and food market is in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn
• super crispy wiener schnitzel – cravings were satisfied by the Coffee Mill (sadly, recently closed forever)
• the crunch from the crust of freshly baked bread
• vegetable crunch is also good – the first crop of coreless carrots; celery hearts – when fresh, are crunchy and can be nicely enhanced with crunchy peanut butter; radishes - freshly harvested, with a sprinkle of salt
• and my favourite apples – aptly named Honey Crisp

It seems I am not alone. 

According to Mario Batali (in The Babbo Cookbook), "The single word 'crispy' sells more food than a barrage of adjectives describing the ingredients or cooking techniques."

Eating triggers many senses – visual (we want our food to be “eye candy”); aroma (helpful in triggering digestive juices). Flavour (the artful combination of the basic tastes - sweet, salty sour, bitter and umamai) may not be the most important sense. Texture (and often the accompanying sound) can trump all – and there is an entire industry focusing on that.

An article on food texture in The Guardian refers to the "Texture Centre of Excellence help(ing) the food industry achieve the perfect consistency for their products. Texture is big business and the science of food structure even has its own ology: food rheology... the professionals know all too well that, while the sensory spotlight may fall on flavour when we're savouring a mouthful, get the texture wrong and it's game over – we'll reject it outright.”

Why do we like crunchy and crispy? It tends to signal freshness. And then there is the matter of chewing. The word conjures iconic images of cows chewing cud, but it seems we need to chew, and that need "continues right through to old age when... we'll throw cash and inconvenience at fixing our teeth so we may continue to chew, even though we could just as well get our nutrition from soft or pureed foods. Gnawing is… good for you, too. A growing body of research indicates that it increases blood flow to the brain, which helps stave off dementia.” (Source)

While some write haikus honouring mush, others claim it is almost tortuous to be limited to mushy food - “a form of sensory deprivation… the mind rebels against bland, single-texture foods, edibles that do not engage the oral device.” (Source) A food industry consultant “says the three most relished texture notes are crispy, creamy and chewy”. I like all those words, as long as "chewy" does not equal rubbery.

Rubbery. Gritty. Slimy. Not big hits with most people. I could not find a satisfyingly complete lexicon of food texture words. This British Nutrition Foundation Sensory Vocabulary poster makes a good attempt, but oddly does not include the word chewy. Think crunchy is the same as crispy? Apparently not, according to Wikipedia.  

So, we like crunchy / crispy because of chewing, and… because of sound! There are experts who spend years researching topics such as how crunch works. “To get this noise, you need crack speeds of 300 meters per second... The speed of sound. The crunch of a chip is a tiny sonic boom inside your mouth… to a certain extent, we eat with our ears… You eat physical properties with a little bit of taste and aroma. And if the physics is not good, then you don’t eat it.” (Source)

The happenings in our mouth while eating are called mouthfeel - also referred to as oral haptics. Recent studies suggest that oral haptics influence our judgement about calories. People tend to assume that crunchier food has fewer calories. Maybe my crunchy food moments are also a calorie delusion!

The appeal of crunchy / crispy is cross-cultural and may even be primitive. In his book The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food, John S. Allen, a research scientist, proposes that we like crunch because it was central to the primitive diet - in the form of insects. Once insects (and other foods) met fire / cooking (and the Maillard Reaction) crunch became part of the human experience. I’ll have to ponder the idea that the love of crunch is the manifestation of the paleo insect-eater inside each of us. And yet, simple Google searches can lead to a reading journey about insects as the future food. Once the renowned René Redzepi begins to explore possibilities, we know we have not heard the last of this.

This blog exercise in thinking, reading and writing came from my need for crunch. Most days that need is satisfied by roasted, unsalted (healthy) almonds. Seeking some variety, I had some adventures roasting legumes (good for us), specifically chickpeas – and have also included a roasted edamame snack. (Click here for recipes.) Healthy snacks can make us feel virtuous, but too much virtue comes with a price – watch the calorie count.

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Three Cheers for Broccoli - Three Ways!

It was soup day again, and we were still surrounded by white (snow) – wishing for green (Spring). There was broccoli in the fridge and so broccoli soup became the main item on the menu. My Dad used to like broccoli soup. It was years ago that I had tried to make some for him. Each attempt tasted fine, but the gorgeous green more often than not transformed into the less appetizing olive green colour. It was only in recent years (when he was no longer with us) that I settled on the Podleski Sisters’ version of broccoli soup. 

Broccoli is part of the cabbage family – wait until I have time to share cabbage recipes – yum. So far, every time I research something for this blog, I discover it is an ancient food – and broccoli has been around since the 6th century BC! Italians seem to get credit for cultivating and popularizing broccoli, which “was first introduced to the United States by Italian immigrants but did not become widely known there until the 1920s.” (Source)

As grown ups, many of us likely began reaching for broccoli more often when we discovered it was a great source of vitamin C and fibre, and had anti-cancer properties. It appears on (and tends to disappear from) every veggie tray, at every event / meeting. Yet, people of a certain age may have bad memories of poorly prepared and unappetizing cooked broccoli – often not a kiddie’s favourite. If you’ll pardon the old joke: “What’s the difference between boogers and broccoli? Kids don’t like to eat broccoli.” (badda boom!)

I am sharing the recipe for Looneyspoons reasonably low cal, yet flavourful broccoli soup. It uses the florets only. What to do with the stalks? If I was a clever girl, I’d add them to a freezer bag, saving up veggie scraps to make a homemade veggie stock – but I am not that clever. And yet, it seems wrong to toss the broccoli stalk. Here’s what to do – keep the stalks refrigerated until you accumulate 3-4 stalks and then make Jacques Pépin's Risotto with Broccoli Stalks and Mushrooms.

If suddenly it is the broccoli florets that are luxuriating in the refrigerator – they are great eaten raw with Buttermilk Ranch Dressing as a dip, or can in minutes be transformed into a tasty side with this Optimum Health recipe.

Three recipes, and three cheers for Broccoli!

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Chocolate Walnut Cookies – bet you can’t eat just one…

For several years, we have travelled to NYC annually to visit our favourite scholar. One year we finally decided to visit Grand Central Station/Terminal. The iconic station is itself a sight to behold, but the visit is enhanced by checking out the Grand Central Market on one end, and the shops at the other end. It was the "year of macarons", and I was drawn to the displays of a shop called Financier Pastries. In addition to buying gorgeously coloured macarons, I grabbed a wee bag of chocolate walnut flourless cookies. They were so wonderful, I had to find a recipe replicating them. For years, I was using the one from Epicurious. Recently, I have found a recipe that is the original.

The cookies contain no flour, so are gluten-free and Passover friendly. Because the recipe uses egg whites, there is a sort of meringue chew – combined with texture from the walnuts - and the inside is moist and fudge-y. The crackle top retains the shiny quality. It is gorgeous to look at, and tastes heavenly. 

All sources I found referred to these as Payard’s cookies.  They write about this revered pâtissier as if he’s dead, but apparently not. He has several shops in Manhattan (and Japan and Korea). Am feeling red-faced that I have never tracked down one of the locations – will be on the list for this year.

Quirky trivia – the Financier Pastry product line includes Payard’s cookies, and Payard’s product line includes “Financiers”.  The website for Financier Pastry says their name is inspired by the financial district where their flagship store is located, but the name also evokes their custom - with each coffee they give a small French pastry in the shape of a gold bar called a “financier”. Payard also sells financiers – not in the shape of a gold bar. In fact, they look a bit like cupcakes, and Smitten Kitchen offers us a recipe for this treat which uses almond flour.

The cookies I make tend to be about 1.5 inch diametre - though if the batter is a bit runny, the cookies tend to flatten and spread to about two inches.  Apparently, the original Payard cookies, that he sells to this day, are huge – four inch diametre. That being the case, "one" might be all any person could eat.

I went through a spell of making these often, and recently dusted off the recipe to make a batch for this blog entry. I was alone in the kitchen, tasting the first batch and practically startled myself with my “out loud voice” making all sorts of mmm, nomnom sounds. Love these cookies – resistance is futile!

Click here for the recipe. It’s another simple one that can be mixed by hand or mixer. Add it to the list of recipes that use up leftover egg whites.