mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

"Eat lots a fish!" - tilapia, for one

Fish, as is well known, can be a great food for those into dining for health and weight management. But these days, fresh fish is beset with so many problems: possible contamination with mercury and other pollutants; over-fishing of wild stocks; fish-farming methods that damage the environment; and often astronomical prices at market. So what's a a health-conscious fish-fan to do?

Eat tilapia, that's what.

Tilapia can be farmed sustainably and with minimal impact on the environment--they are omnivores but thrive on an all-vegetarian environment, and are traditionally farmed in enclosed tanks (as opposed to the environment-damaging open tanks used to farm Atlantic salmon). They are by no means endangered--in fact, in some areas where they've been introduced to the wild, they've become an invasive nuisance species, another reason why the preferred farming method is all-enclosed tanks. They're a low-fat low-on-the-food-chain species--so, alas, not much omega-3 fatty acid benefit, but on the other hand that means they don't accumulate fat-soluble pollutants the way salmon and other fatty fish do. Their mild white flesh makes them a great culinary canvas for all sorts of seasoning and cooking techniques. And best of all, they're a real bargain price-wise.

Here is a Chinese-style whole steamed fish with black bean sauce with which I've had great success. One big tilapia, cooked this way, makes a great meal for two. I like to leave head and tail intact as the Chinese do--but if you can't bear looking at the fish head on your plate, by all means have the fishmonger remove it.

Ingredients:

• One whole fresh tilapia, about 1-1/2 to 2 pounds--scales, gills, innards, and fins removed, head and tail intact
• Ginger root, about the equivalent of a 1-inch cube
• Scallions, one or two
• Chinese fermented black beans (not to be confused with Latin American black turtle beans!), about 2 tsp. or to taste
• Chinese dark soy sauce, 1 tblsp.
• Shaohsing wine (or other rice wine, or dry sherry), 1 tblsp.
• Dark sesame oil, 1 tsp.
• Sugar, 1/2 tsp. (don't freak! it's only 1/2 tsp., and it really does help balance the sauce)
• Salt, about 1 tsp.

Special equipment:

• A large wok or pot with a tight-fitting lid to use as your steamer--I use a deep wok-like pan with a glass lid, which is really handy for keeping an eye on the fish without removing the lid and letting all the steam escape.
• A heat-proof rimmed dish which will just hold the fish without letting any of its delicious juices drip away, and which will fit comfortably inside your steaming utensil with the lid in place--I use a big pie plate.
• A rack to hold the plate on which you will lay your fish--I use one of those folding steamer baskets with the central post removed.

Method:

1. Mise en place: roughly chop the black beans. Peel the ginger and cut into fine julliene. Trim the scallions and julliene them too.
2. Set up your steaming equipment: put just enough water in the bottom of your pot or wok so that it stays below the surface of your steaming rack. Put the rack in, put the lid on top, and put the whole rig over moderate heat so that it'll have a good head of steam rolling by the time you're ready to place the fish inside.
3. Prepare your fish: rinse it all over, removing any remaining bits of gore from its abdominal cavity, and pat dry inside and out with paper toweling. Cut deep crosswise slits in both sides of the fish, about an inch apart and just about down to bone without going through. Rub inside and out with the salt, working it into the slits as well. Place the fish in your rimmed plate.
4. Combine the black beans, soy sauce, wine, oil, and sugar, and stir well. Pour the black bean mixture evenly over the entire fish, then scatter the ginger and scallions evenly over the fish as well.
5. Slip your dish full of fish into your steamer equipment, getting the lid back on as quickly as possible to avoid letting too much steam and heat escape. Let the fish steam about 15 to 20 minutes uninterrupted (this is where that glass lid comes in really handy!).
6. After about 15 minutes or so, you can start checking for doneness by slipping the lid off and looking inside one of the slits you cut in the fish. If all the flesh down in that slit has just barely lost that translucent still-raw look, your fish is basically done. Do not over-cook!
7. Bring the fish to the table on the plate in which it was steamed, and serve with rice to sop up all the pan juices. For more adventurous eaters, the meat and gelatinous stuff in the fish head is great eating--the Chinese consider the fish head a delicacy, to be reserved for the dinner guest of honor.

Variations: You can of course do this recipe with just about any fish of about the same size and mildness of flavor. With a little adjustment in timing and such, you could do it with steaks or fillets too (in that case, I'd recommend using some non-stick cooking spray on the dish that will hold the fish). For those who like their food spicy, you can add crushed dried chilies or chili bean paste (toban jian) to the black bean mixture.

Oh yeah--I am told that there is an old superstition among the Chinese (and other sea-faring peoples too) that if you turn a fish over at the dinner table, somewhere out at sea a fishing vessel will capsize! I'm not superstitious but I do like honoring cultural traditions, so once I've served all the meat off one side of a whole fish I pry up its spine and remove it to get at the remaining meat, rather than attempting to flip the fish (this also keeps the delicate fish from breaking into bits, so it's practical as well).

More about tilapia:
Oceans Alive on eco-safety of tilapia
Tilapia: the fish of the future?

Today's lunch: pan-Asian hodgepodge soup!

Once or twice a week at least, I have this lunch routine in which I simmer a random assortment of interesting mostly-Asian ingredients together in broth for a kind of pan-Asian fusion soup. From reading various blogs and on-line forums frequented by cooks from various Asian countries, I get the impression that many of them keep it a lot simpler than I do, and might find my soup a bit of a random hodge-podge--but hey, I (usually!) like what I come up with, and I'm a bit of a hodgepodge cook anyway so I guess it suits me. Although I do note that the beloved Japanese winter stew known as oden is also a bit of a hodgepodge--so I'm going to go ahead and claim that as one of my inspirations.

Anyway, today's hodgepodge contains:

• Leftover chicken broth from my freezer;
• Konnyaku noodle knots
• Shiitake mushrooms, broken into pieces
• Black ear fungus, broken into pieces
• Daikon, sliced and quartered
• Kombu, snipped into slices
• Fresh ginger root, three little slices
• Garlic, a couple of big cloves sliced

Simmer that all together for about an hour and voila--yummy filling soup! And incidentally, very low in calories yet full of nutrition, flavor, and interesting texture contrasts. And very warming on a relatively cool day here in slightly-overcast coastal Southern California. Soup is good food!

More diet foods that don't suck: konnyaku noodle frenzy!

I realize that I've posted before about the joys of konnyaku, that fascinating traditional Japanese gelatin with almost no calories and lots of cooking uses. Well, I've discovered some new-to-me forms of konnyaku that I'm really enjoying, and so I want to share the joy.

This pre-packaged little lunch kit is labeled as "konnyaku noodles," rather than shirataki, the word I've learned to associate with noodles cut from konnyaku gelatin. And in fact, whereas shirataki tend to be thin like spaghetti, these are rather broader like fettucini. The kit also comes with little packets of hoisin sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds, and even a wee plastic fork so you can assemble and eat your little noodle lunch while on the go.

A lot of people find konnyaku's natural odor and flavor out of the package a tad off-putting, but I don't mind them, especially after I give the noodles a nice rinse in hot tap water. I then assemble my little kit, and voila: almost-calorie-free snack! (I give it a stir to get the condiments thoroughly distributed throughout the noodles before chowing down).

Alas, I am unable to find an online source for the noodle packet above. I bought it at 99 Ranch Market, an Asian grocery store chain with branches in Southern California. I'm willing to bet that noodle packets like this could be found in many other Asian groceries as well--it looks like a product packaged for wide distribution. 

In praise of watermelon

"The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented."

This Mark Twain quote just slays me. And I just had some watermelon deserving of such an epigram.

It was one of those baby seedless jobbies from Dulcinea Farms, and it was crisp-fleshed, super-sweet, intensely flavorful, and a beautiful ultra-watermelon-red. Just a few soft little white seeds, too. And it's also healthy as all-get out, naturally low in calories and the deep red color shows how loaded with lycopene it is.

I should have taken a photo of it, it was so pretty, but wanting to eat it kind of distracted me. There are leftovers; they're all cubed up and squirreled away in the fridge. Ice-cold watermelon on hot humid day--yum.

Singing the praises of Stevia

It's been ages since I've had a new addition to my list of Diet Foods That Don't Suck, but I've finally stumbled across a real beaut. Actually, I had been hearing about stevia for some time, but just hadn't bothered to check it out until just the other day--and now I wish I'd done so years ago.

For stevia may be the holy grail of weight-conscious people: an all-natural, herb-based sweetener with zero calories and zero carbs.

Yep, you read that right. I know--seems highly improbable, no? That's why I resisted checking the stuff out for so long. I thought it had to be a crock. But no--the stuff is really what it bills itself to be.

I bought a jar of powdered stevia extract from Trader Joe's, and have used it successfully in a variety of ways. It's great for sweetening beverages and sprinkling over tart berries or plain yogurt. Its powdered form makes it reminiscent of powdered sugar; only about a quarter-teaspoon is enought to sweeten a big glass of strong iced coffee to my liking. Like other non-nutritive sweeteners, it does have a slightly bitter aftertaste, but less so than several others I've used over the years, such as saccharine. And unlike saccharine, this stuff comes not from a test-tube but from a plant that's been grown for its naturally-sweet leaves for years.

The stuff is not without controversy -- apparently, due to some later-debunked studies, the FDA put a total embargo on the stuff for some time; when those studies were debunked, the FDA relented sufficiently to allow its sale but only when sold on its own as a nutritional supplement. One can't help but sense the long arm of the chemicalized diet food industry, leaning hard on the FDA to keep this stuff from cutting into their profits. Especially since the herb is apparently super-easy to grow at home.

It's by no means perfect--right now I'm unclear on how useable it is for baking, though I suspect that since its sweetening power is not based on any sugars, it probably can't pull off any of the confectionary chemistry that only sugars can pull off. But there do seem to be stevia cookbooks out there, so I intend to check them out. Making some baked goods that are high in healthy nutrients and low in refined-sugar empty calories would definitely be sweet. (Sorry--couldn't resist.)

For more about stevia, check out this page.

Diet beverages that (sorta) don't suck--heat wave edition

My attitude with regard to diet industry food products has admittedly been kind of schizoid. In general, I don't trust the diet industry or its wonder-foods any further than I can throw their staff nutritionists. The quality and taste of the products mostly suck, and the artificial ingredient lists put me off. However, there are a handful of products I use anyway:

• some, like The Laughing Cow's light cheese, because they actually do taste pretty damn good;
• some, like certain brands of non-stick cooking spray, because they actually serve a useful purpose and are inoffensive in flavor;
• and then there are a few items that I just use anyway because ... well, maybe because I'm just a desperate sucker.

Into that third category fall all sorts of diet soft drinks. I try to avoid the damn things, because these beverages have some of the most intimidating-looking ingredient lists on the planet, and no redeeming nutritional value whatsoever ... except for their water content, and since getting my full cemplement of fluids every day is a continual struggle, I have given myself permission to drink any beverage that makes that fluid intake even a little more enticing.

My latest diet beverage enthusiasm, however, is perhaps a new nadir for me. Someone on eGullet was going on about those diet beverage powders, like Crystal Light and the like. At first blush, they sounded pretty unappealing. Still, the weather was heating up, and I was getting really bored with iced herbal tea, so the next time I shopped at a mainstream supermarket I checked out the stuff. Lemonade--pink or white--seemed to be a popular flavor choice, but it wasn't turning my crank. But then I spotted what was alledged to be a strawberry/orange/banana combo, and curiosity got the better of me.

Verdict: well, the stuff does taste totally artificial, and very sweet; the banana aspect of the flavor is probably the only thing that saves it from just being that proverbial "bug juice" known to kids in summer camps everywhere. The banana flavor also masks the Nutrasweet aftertaste better than some. But you can't really call this a high-quality beverage.

And yet--damn, the stuff's addictive. Especially in the recent heat, when I really need to not neglect my fluids but just find it a chore to keep up, this new-style bug juice has really made it easy. I've been going through pitchers of the stuff without blinking an eye. Ghod knows what it's doing to my kidneys ... although a long-time local resident assured me that it was probably no worse than San Diego's rather "crunchy" public water supply.

Another brand of diet soft drinks that doesn't suck too badly are Hansen's Diet Sodas. Hansen's is a brand of "natural" soft drinks known for interesting flavors like strawberry/kiwi and and key lime. Their diet sodas also feature interesting flavors, and are sweetened with Splenda, which I find has less funky aftertaste than Nutrasweet (your mileage may vary). Various local supermarkets also have store brands of "natural" diet sodas (now there's an oxymoron) with interesting flavors, usually bottled in clear plastic so that you can see the pop is also clear (they at least didn't bother with the artificial color, whoopie).

Meanwhile, I understand that the name brand soft drink manufacturers keep on bringing out more and more variants, no doubt to entice others who, like me, get easily bored with beverage. But they've totally lost me with their bazillion variants of already-established flavors (what the hell, I thought Fresca was just supposed to be grapefruit flavor). I did drink a cherry-vanilla diet Dr. Pepper the other day ... I like Dr. Pepper, but this stuff was too over-flavored even for me. And way over-carbonated.

Who knows--maybe I'll get sufficiently overdosed on all this over-flavored crap and go back to herbal iced tea--or maybe even just plain water, how's that for a revolutionary idea? But in the meantime, I'll keep swilling down the swill, figuring that at least in this weather I deserve a break from totally-doctrinaire healthfulness.

Seaweed: Good eating by any name

For the uninitiated, the mention of "seaweed" conjures up memories of massive tangles of funky-smelling, space-alien-looking vegetation drying in the sun just below the high-tide line of their favorite beach. Or worse, memories of creepy-feeling tangles of space-alien vegetation attempting to wrap itself around your ankles as you wade off your favorite beach. Neither of which memories encourage one to think of said space-alien vegetation as any kind of good eats.

Despite those memories, the odds are strong that you've been eating seaweed for years without knowing it. Derivatives from seaweed have found their ways into all sorts of processed foods in the form of agar-agar, carageenan, and other stabilizers. Admittedly, these highly-refined products don't do much more for seaweeds' image than those childhood beach encouters.

No wonder many propenents of seaweeds as delicious and healthy foods choose to re-style the stuff as "sea vegetables." However, my inner five-year-old is massively attached to keeping the "seaweed" name, if for no other reason than to preserve its great pun-potential (said inner five-year-old, little wiseass that she be, is now lustily singing "I see the weed, the weed sees me ...").

Anyway ... for centuries before giant multinational food conglomerates discovered the stuff, seaweeds were used in much more natural forms as nutritious and great-tasting whole foods. Just about every people who have made their home near bodies of water (salt or fresh) where the stuff grows have used it as a food source. The derivative carageenan, for instance, comes from a seaweed the Irish have been using for centuries under the name Irish moss.

But I think it's safe to say that Japanese cuisine has made itself the champion of creative seaweed use. Thanks to the recent craze for sushi, most Americans are at least familiar with nori, made from varieties of seaweed known as Porphyra that are processed into sheets in a process not unlike paper-making. But wrapping your roll is just the beginning. Strips of kombu make the base of delicious broths and stocks, while kombu tied or knotted into rolls gets simmered in stews. Leafy wakame and threadlike hijiki turn up in salads. And sushi-wrapping is only one of a bazillion uses for nori, which turns up as everything from teriaki-seasoned strips for snacking, to a crumbled condiment flavored with everything from toasted sesame seeds to bits of egg and salmon, to be sprinkled on rice and other foods.

Why bother with seaweeds? Well, first off, the stuff is chockful of nutrition. Seaweeds basically absorb all the nutrients they need for their existence from the waters around them, and then deliver all that to you on the dinner plate. Nutrients found in seaweed can help fight a host of health ills including cancer, inflammation, thyroid problems, birth defects, cardiovascular disease, and menopausal symptoms.

Secondly, they're delicious. And one of the reasons they're delicious is that they are naturally rich in glutamate, the amino acid which is the healthy predecessor of monosodium glutamate. Glutamate is the source of that savory "umami" flavor so highly prized by Japanese cooks; this is why glutamate-rich kombu is an essential ingredient in the classic Japanese soup stock dashi. Plus the many shapes, colors, and textures of all the different seaweed varieties just add to the foods' appeal for the inventive cook.

And oh yes--seaweeds are naturally low in calories. So what's not to love?

For the seaweed novice, perhaps the easiest way to get your feet wet (ow, sorry, my inner five-year-old made me do it) is by way of that crumbled shake-on nori condiment I mentioned earlier. Known collectively as furikake, this stuff comes in an almost-bewildering number of varieties and flavors. Some have compared the profusion of furikakes to that of American breakfast cereals, complete with more colorful varieties meant to appeal to kids, and more sophisticated versions for adult tastes. You can find furikake in just about any Asian market, and sometimes even in the Asian food sections of mainstream supermarkets. Failing that, you can try ordering it online (here is just one such online source), or make your own simple condiment by buying sheets of nori and crumbling them.

Traditionally, furikake is sprinkled over hot steamed rice, but nowadays both Japanese and non-Japanese have gotten majorly inventive with the stuff. Here, for instance, are some suggestions from some of the creative folks on eGullet. Myself, I've gotten really fond of zipping up vegetables with the stuff. Last night, for instance, I sprinkled it all over a combination of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, and green onions, along with some sesame oil and rice wine vinegar--yummy and refreshing.

For more detailed info about the nutritional joys of seaweed, look here. For cooking tips and links to recipes, look here. With these hints as a starting point, hopefully you too will be able to engage in a seaweed diet--as in "I see weed, I eat it." (And maybe your own inner five-year-old will get a good giggle out of it all as well.)

On beyond tofu: the wonderful (and stinky!) world of fermented bean curd

One of the many charming stories my mother once told me about my baby days involved a trip to the supermarket. Mom had me in the shopping cart along with a package of those individually-wrapped American cheese "food" slices, and gave me one slice to keep me occupied. And then she got into her shopping, and only when she was done and rolling me and her haul to the cash register did she realize there was now nothing left of that entire package of cheese-food except a mound of plastic wrappers and a very happy baby.

My taste in cheese improved considerably since those early days, but my capacity for inhaling mass quantities of it in no way diminished ... until the start of my health regimen back in January. Then I got serious about lowering both my fat and protein intake, and alas the cheese went on restriction right along with the meat--much smaller quantities, and much lower fat levels in those quantities. But in some ways the cheese restriction has been more trying than that on meat, because while it is possible to find lean cuts of meat that taste good, I have found exceedingly few low-fat cheeses that don't taste like ass (with Laughing Cow Light being one of the very few exceptions).

But that was before I happened on yet another little wonder food from Chinese traditional cookery known variously as fermented bean curd, fermented bean cake, preserved bean curd, wet bean curd, bean cheese, or fu yu. All these names designate the same general product: little cubes of tofu that have been allowed to ferment with various seasonings. The fermenting process transforms the tofu from its original bland sponginess to something much more intense--creamy-textured and mashable like cream cheese, strong-smelling and sharp-tasting like a really heavy-duty bleu cheese. And yet, underneath all that, it's still tofu--significantly lower in calories than dairy cheese, and also lower in fat if you get the variety not packed in oil.

There are several different varieties of fermented bean curd, that you'll usually find all together in little jars in an Asian supermarket. Common varieties include the basic white fermented bean curd with no extra seasonings; the white stuff with a tinge of heat--and orangey color--from chiles; and, not to be confused with the chile-laced stuff, there is also a deep-red fermented bean curd, which gets its color, and a different flavor, from a special fermented red rice. You may also find other variations, depending on the market--I suspect that in earlier times there were probably as many different varieties as there were home cooks making this stuff, each no doubt a family recipe lovingly passed down through the generations.

Traditionally, the Chinese use fermented bean curd--sparingly--as a condiment or ingredient in various rice, vegetable, and meat dishes. It shows up frequently, for instance, as a condiment added to the wonderfully soothing rice porridge known variously as jook or congee (and many alternate transliterations of different Chinese dialects into the English alphabet). When just two or three little cubes of the fermented bean curd are added to such dishes, the pungency of the fermented bean curd mellows out and blends in, leaving behind a subtle boost of savoryness that just perks up the entire dish.

But recently, I've gotten bold and actually used the stuff like cream cheese as a spread--and boy, does it ever wake you up! A little of this stuff does go a long way, but as far as I'm concerned, that's a feature--you only need a little to get a big flavor hit. It really works well for me when spread thinly on a nice dark dense whole-grain bread. I also found that a cube or two, mashed, in a whole-wheat pita, along with a couple leaves of lettuce or other greenery, makes a really nice quick snack. And I'm still experimenting with other uses for this stuff.

Admittedly, the strong taste and smell of fermented bean curd will hardly be everybody's cup of tea, not unlike the strong-flavored dairy cheeses it so resembles. But for those who adore a nice stinky milk-cheese, a nice stinky bean-cheese might be right up your alley.

A very long, and extremely detailed, article on fermented bean curd can be found here.

Rice cakes and low-fat cheese that don't suck!

A couple more items to add to the non-sucky diet food hall of fame:

• Laughing Cow Light cheese -- okay, I guess these are technically processed cheese spreads, but they taste amazingly good, the calorie count and fat content are impressively low, they spread really well, and they come in nice neat foil-wrapped wedges for easy packing into brown-bag lunches and the like. The garlic and herb flavor is my favorite, but the French onion and original Swiss-cheese flavors are quite nice too.
• Lundberg Farms rice cakes -- unlike your run-of-the-mill rice cakes that taste like very slightly flavored styrofoam, Lundberg rice cakes have some serious umph to them. In fact, a Lundberg rice cake weighs at least twice as much as a standard rice cake--probably because they manage to cram twice as much rice into them. Of course, that also means they have twice as many calories--but at least you feel like you've actually eaten something afterward. And their flavored cakes are excellent. I just picked up a package of a new flavor, not yet listed on their website: KoKu Seaweed, with what the package blurb describes as "a hint of wasabi flavor." I gotta tell ya, it's more than just a "hint"--these babies pack some serious wasabi thrill, and the little flecks of nori add some nice nuances too.

Diet foods that don't suck, round two

For your consideration: a couple more diet foods that have passed my most severe anti-suck scrutiny:

• Trader Joe's non-stick cooking sprays--aaaaah, those damned cooking sprays. In theory they should be a boon to anyone wanting to moderate their fat intake, but the reality seldom lives up to the theory. The leading brands blandish promises of real butter-like flavor or real olive-oil content ... but they also deliver a dose of really-icky-tasting artificial flavor, as well as assorted artificial preservatives and additives. Not particularly what you'd call good eats.
        Trader Joe's non-stick sprays, however, actually taste neutral to decent. The can of their canola oil spray I currently have in the house contains (in addition to the propellant) only "100% expeller pressed" canola oil, soy lecithin (the soybean's version of a nutrient found in all living cells), and water.
        I really like using cooking sprays, as they allow me to reserve my daily allotment of fat for more condiment-type uses--like a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil on a salad, or a dollop of sesame oil in an Asian dish. So thank you once again, Trader Joe's, for supplying a product that I can actually use.
     
• Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop Microwave Kettle Corn -- I swore I'd never get into microwave popcorn, as a result of one too many run-ins with the dreaded Microwave Popcorn reek. In fact, most nuke-corn seems to suffer from similar issues to most non-stick cooking sprays--too many artificial ingredients with sketchy flavor and odor profiles. And after you survived the stink, the actual popcorn wasn't much to write home about. One might as well be eating those styrofoam peanuts used for to cushion breakables for shipping.
        So imagine my surprise when I nuked up some of Orville's "light" kettle corn, and not only did not get reeked out, but found the stuff to be damn tasty! Mind you, this is hardly an additive-free product; the sweet component of the kettle corn, for one thing, is Splenda/sucralose. However, its use is so subtle that I could detect no tell-tale artificial-sweetener aftertaste, and it's balanced nicely against an equally subtle saltiness. And this stuff is also low-fat too. So for those of you who have to wean yourself off a volume-snacking jones, this stuff could be a real life-saver.

Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment of this series! :-)

P.S. Sharp-eyed readers of this blog may have already noticed that formatty things on the webpage are continuing to shift around a little. I'm essentially "rearranging the furniture" this way and that as I keep trying out software features to see how I like them. Eventually, one of these rearrangements will consist of re-doing all the blog categories so that, for instance, there's a whole section for these Diet Foods That Don't Suck entries--but until then, they'll always have the "Diet Foods That Don't Suck" phrase in their title. Enjoy!