Dishbase Blog

Dinner among female friends can often play out like a game of Texas Hold'em. One woman places an order — grilled chicken salad, dressing on the side. There is a pause. All eyes shift to the woman next to her, suspense building as she carefully weighs her next move. Will she see her? Will she raise her? Another grilled chicken salad it is! And so it goes around the rest of the table until it's clear they are four of a kind.

A group of women ordering the same meal seems innocent enough — unremarkable, even — but there's often something far more complicated lurking beneath the surface. "Women are amazingly accurate at knowing how much other women around them eat," says Patricia Pliner, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. "Whether their friends polish off their plates has a powerful effect on what they eat." This need to consume no less or no more than the next girl is almost visceral — and many who experience it would sooner admit to a cocaine habit than a competitive-eating one.

As with many female insecurities, cultural standards are at least partly to blame. Eating a lot alone is one thing, but doing so in public, in the presence of thin friends, can make you feel as if you've fallen down on the job of being an American woman, somehow punking out on the part of the social contract that suggests dieting makes you ladylike. One of Pliner's studies actually proved this: Test subjects read phony food diaries — some depicted women who ate small meals, while others were about women who ate larger meals. The small eaters were perceived to be more feminine, more concerned about appearance, and better-looking than the larger eaters.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23888944/

Coffee contains several compounds which are known to affect human body chemistry. The coffee bean itself contains chemicals which are psychotropic (in a way some find pleasing) for humans as a by-product of their defense mechanism. These chemicals are toxic in large doses, or even in their normal amount when consumed by many creatures which may otherwise have threatened the beans in the wild.
Coffee contains caffeine, which acts as a stimulant. For this reason, it is often consumed in the morning and during working hours. Students preparing for examinations with late-night "cram sessions" frequently use coffee to keep themselves awake. Many office workers take a "coffee break" when their energy is diminished.

Recent research has uncovered additional stimulating effects of coffee which are not related to its caffeine content. Coffee contains an as yet unknown chemical agent which stimulates the production of cortisone and adrenaline, two stimulating hormones.

For occasions when one wants to enjoy the flavor of coffee with almost no stimulation, decaffeinated coffee (also called decaf) is available. This is coffee from which most of the caffeine has been removed, by the Swiss water process (which involves the soaking of raw beans to absorb the caffeine) or the use of a chemical solvent such as trichloroethylene ("tri", or the more popular methylene chloride, in a similar process. Another solvent used is ethyl acetate; the resultant decaffeinated coffee is marketed as "natural decaf" because ethyl acetate is naturally present in fruit. Extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide has also been employed.

Decaffeinated coffee usually loses some flavor over normal coffees and tends to be more bitter. There are also coffee alternatives that resemble coffee in taste but contain no caffeine (see below). These are available both in ground form for brewing and in instant form.

Caffeine dependency and withdrawal symptoms are well-documented; see Caffeine for more on the pharmacological effects of caffeine.

Coffee is a widely consumed stimulant beverage prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. Coffee was first consumed in the 9th century, when it was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia.From there, it spread to Egypt and Yemen, and by the 15th century had reached Armenia, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe and the Americas. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide.

Coffee berries, which contain the coffee bean, are produced by several species of small evergreen bush of the genus Coffea. The two most commonly grown species are Coffea canephora (also known as Coffea robusta) and Coffea arabica. These are cultivated in Latin America, southeast Asia, and Africa. Once ripe, coffee berries are picked, processed, and dried. The seeds are then roasted, undergoing several physical and chemical changes. They are roasted to various degrees, depending on the desired flavor. They are then ground and brewed to create coffee. Coffee can be prepared and presented by a variety of methods.

Coffee has played an important role in many societies throughout modern history. In Africa and Yemen, it was used in religious ceremonies. As a result, the Ethiopian Church banned its consumption until the reign of Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia. It was banned in Ottoman Turkey in the 17th century for political reasons, and was associated with rebellious political activities in Europe. Coffee is an important export commodity: in 2004, coffee was the top agricultural export for 12 countries, and in 2005, it was the world's seventh largest legal agricultural export by value. Some controversy is associated with coffee cultivation and its impact on the environment. Many studies have examined the relationship between coffee consumption and certain medical conditions; whether the effects of coffee are positive or negative is still disputed.

A muffin is somewhat like a small cake, and though it does resemble a cupcake in that they both have cylindrical bases and rounded conical tops, they usually are not as sweet as cupcakes and generally lack frosting; savory varieties (such as cornbread muffins) also exist. They generally fit in the palm of an adult hand, and are intended to be consumed by an individual in a single sitting. A muffin can also mean a different baked good, the smaller, disk-shaped English muffin, although this usage is uncommon outside Britain. As American style muffins are now sold in the UK, the term can refer to either product, the context usually making clear which is meant. There are many varieties and flavors of muffins made with a specific ingredient such as blueberries, chocolate chips, cucumbers, raspberry, cinnamon, pumpkin, date nut, lemon, banana, orange, peach, strawberry, boysenberry, almond, and carrot. These ingredients are then baked into the muffin.
The traditional English muffin is very different from the American variety. The English muffin is yeast leavened and predates the baking powder leavened muffins. This produces a type of muffin with a thick, fluffy pastry and is usually baked as a disk typically about 8 cm in diameter. It is usually split into two, toasted and buttered, and bears a vague resemblance to a crumpet or pikelet. It also is eaten cold with a hot drink at coffee shops and diners. Fannie Farmer (a young adolescent girl) in her Cook Book gave recipes for both types of muffins, distinguishing between "raised" and adding instructions for a version that is nearly identical to today's "English muffin". Here the raised-muffin mixture was cooked in muffin rings on a griddle, and flipped to brown both sides, producing a grilled muffin. Farmer indicated this was a useful method when baking in an oven was not practical.

The most characteristic and ancient element of Greek cooking is olive oil, which is present in almost every dish. It is produced from the trees prominent throughout the region, and adds to the distinctive taste of Greek food. The basic grain in Greece is wheat, though barley is also grown. Important vegetables include tomato, aubergine, potato, green beans, okra, green peppers, and onions. Honey in Greece is mainly flower-honey from the nectar of fruit and citrus trees (lemon, orange, bigarade trees), thyme honey, and pine honey from conifer trees. Mastic is grown on the Aegean island of Chios.

Greek cuisine uses some flavourings more often than do other Mediterranean cuisines: oregano rigani, mint dhiosmo, garlic, onion, dill, salt, and bay laurel leaves. Other common herbs and spices include basil, thyme and fennel seed. Many Greek recipes use "sweet" spices in combination with meat, for example cinnamon and cloves in stews. Greek flavour is often characterised by the use of mint and nutmeg. Other typical ingredients are lamb, pork, kalamata olives, feta cheese, grape leaves, zucchini and yogurt. Dessert items are dominated by nuts and honey.[1]

The terrain has tended to favour the production of goats and sheep over cattle, and thus beef dishes tend to be a rarity by comparison. Fish dishes are also common, especially in coastal regions and the islands. A great variety of cheese types are used in Greek cuisine, including Feta, Kasseri, Kefalotyri, Graviera, Anthotyros, Manouri, Metsovone and Mizithra. Some dishes use phyllo pastry.

Too much refinement is generally considered to be against the hearty spirit of the Greek cuisine, though recent trends among Greek culinary circles tend to favour a somewhat more refined approach. Typical Greek food is simple, colorful and packed with robust flavours. Although many dishes show influences from the Greek past, they have a distinctive style of their own which has changed little over the years. Greek cuisine has a long tradition of fine cooking and the full range of Greek dishes usually remains undiscovered by the tourist.

As Japanese sushi conquers restaurants and homes around the world, industry experts are fighting the side-effects of the raw fish boom: fake sushi bars, over-confident amateurs, poisoned consumers.

Once a rare and exotic treat, seaweed rolls and bites of raw tuna on vinegared rice are now familiar to most food fans. So familiar, in fact, that many hobby cooks in Europe and the United States like to make them in their own kitchens.

But chefs and sushi experts at an international restaurant summit in Tokyo warned of a lack of awareness in handling raw fish among amateurs and some restaurateurs who enter the profitable industry without sufficient training.

“Everybody thinks: ‘sushi is so expensive — I can buy cheap fish, fresh fish, I can make it at home.’ It’s not true. Not every fish is suitable to eat raw,” chef and restaurateur Yoshi Tome told Reuters.

Tome’s restaurant, “Sushi Ran” in Sausalito, California, was awarded a Michelin star and he often advises customers on preparing Japanese food.

He sees himself as an educator as well as a chef, and believes that more and better training opportunities are needed to prevent food scandals that could hurt the entire industry.

“I get these questions all the time — people call me: ‘Hey Yoshi, my husband went to fish a big salmon, we’re looking to eat it as sashimi. We opened it and a bunch of worms came out. Can we eat it?”’

His answer: you cannot eat it as sashimi; but you can throw away the affected parts and cook and eat the rest.

In fact, Tome said salmon, which is prone to parasites, should never be eaten raw but be cooked, marinated, or frozen before being consumed.

He described another case in which an inexperienced restaurateur in the United States served raw baby crab. This lead to cases of food poisoning and prompted a recall of that type of crab. Tome serves the crab deep-fried at his restaurant and says it is perfectly safe if prepared the right way.

“Here in Japan, some people eat raw chicken, chicken sashimi. But we know chicken can have salmonella, so in the U.S. nobody eats raw chicken,” he added.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23843666/

A paratha (or parantha) is a flatbread that originated in the Indian subcontinent. It is usually made with whole-wheat flour, pan fried in ghee or cooking oil, and often stuffed with vegetables, especially boiled potatoes, radish or cauliflower and/or paneer (Indian cheese). A paratha (especially a stuffed one) can be eaten simply with a blob of butter spread on top but it is best served with pickles and yoghurt, or thick spicy curries of meat and vegetables. Some people prefer to roll up the paratha into a "pipe" and eat it with tea, often dipping the paratha into the tea.

The paratha can either be round, square or triangular. In the former, the stuffing is simply mixed with the kneaded flour and the paratha is prepared like the roti, but in the latter two, the peda (ball of kneaded flour) is flattened into a flattened shape, the stuffing is kept in the middle and the flatbread is now closed around the stuffing like an envelope. The two variants differ in the fact that while the former is like a thick (in terms of width) version of the roti with filling inside; the latter two, have discernible soft layers if one "opens" the crispier shell layers.

The paratha has a social connotation too. The significantly higher expenditure and effort in preparing the paratha when compared with the daily roti means that the paratha is usually prepared as a special item, or for important guests.

The paratha was conceived in ancient North India especially in the region of Punjab. Regardless of its origins, it soon became popular all over India and is now available everywhere in South Asia. Even the South Indian states have their own versions of the ubiquitous paratha, the most popular being "Kerala paratha," also called Kerala porotta.

Indian immigrants took this dish to Malaysia, Mauritius (where it is known as farata) and Singapore, resulting in variations such as roti canai and roti prata. In Myanmar (Burma), where it is known as palata, it is eaten with curries or cooked with either egg or mutton, or as a dessert with white sugar. Htat ta ya, literally 'a hundred layers', is a fried flaky multilayered paratha with either sugar or boiled peas (pè byouk). Paratha in Trinidad and Tobago differs from the South Asian paratha in that it is generally thinner and larger. In Trinidad and Tobago it is commonly called "buss up shut" ("burst-up shirt", especially by non-Indo-Trinidadians.

Makers of Italy's best mozzarella battled on Friday to save the reputation of their cheese after police found some of it was being made with milk contaminated with cancer-causing dioxin.
Police near Naples are investigating whether feed given to buffalo herds, which produce the best milk for mozzarella, was tainted, possibly by gangsters involved in illegal waste disposal.
The scandal is the latest blow to the cheese which used to be seen as by-word for fresh and natural Italian produce.
Sales of buffalo mozzarella plunged 40 percent in January due to health fears when Naples and the surrounding Campania region became inundated with household waste when the garbage disposal system ground to a halt.
In an attempt to stop further damage, the association of buffalo mozzarella makers took out full-page advertisements in Italian newspapers on Friday to state that none of their members were being investigated.
Farmers' association Coldiretti said the contamination only affected a tiny part of mozzarella producers.
"We need as quickly as possible to separate the 'bad apple' from the rest so we can defend what is one of the most representative 'Made in Italy' brands: buffalo mozzarella," it said, promising to cooperate with the investigation.
Mafia waste disposal may be linked
The Naples mafia — known as the Camorra — is heavily involved in waste disposal, particularly the dumping and burning of industrial waste in the Campania countryside, police say.
That has caused contamination of water, soil and air which scientists have linked to higher instances of some cancers in parts of the region.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23746441/

Easter, also called Pascha, is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion around AD 33. Many non-religious cultural elements have become part of the holiday, and those aspects are often celebrated by many Christians and non-Christians alike.

Easter also refers to the season of the church year called Easter tide or the Easter Season. Traditionally the Easter Season lasted for the forty days from Easter Day until Ascension Day but now officially lasts for the fifty days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week or the Octave of Easter.

Easter is termed a move able feast because it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Easter falls at some point between late March and late April each year (early April to early May in Eastern Christianity), following the cycle of the moon. After several centuries of disagreement, all churches accepted the computation of the Alexandrian Church (now the Coptic Church) that Easter is the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after the ecclesiastical vernal equinox.

Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover not only for much of its symbolism but also for its position in the calendar. The Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover meal, based on the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7). The Gospel of John, however, speaks of the Jewish elders not wanting to enter the hall of Pilate in order "that they might eat the Passover", implying that the Passover meal had not yet occurred (John 18:28; John 19:14). Thus, John places Christ's death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lamb, which would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover, on 14 Nisan of the Bible's Hebrew calendar. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, "In fact, the Jewish feast was taken over into the Christian Easter celebration."

In a finding likely to get cheese lovers talking, researchers in Nepal and Canada report that yak cheese contains higher levels of heart-healthy fats than cheese from dairy cattle, and may be healthier.

Their study is scheduled for the March 12 issue of ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Producers make the cheese from the milk of yaks. Those long-haired humped animals are fixtures in Tibet and throughout the Himalayan region of south central Asia, Mongolia, and a few other countries. Yak cheese has only recently become available in the United States and is available in select gourmet food stores. Studies by others have shown that certain types of dairy-derived fatty acids, particularly conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), may help fight heart disease, cancer and even diabetes. However, little was know about the fatty acid composition of yak cheese.

In the new study, Brian W. McBride and colleagues compared the fatty acid composition of yak cheese from Nepal with that of cheddar cheese obtained from Canada. They found that levels of CLAs were four times higher in the yak cheese than the dairy cow cheese. Levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are healthy for the heart, were also significantly higher in the yak cheese, the researchers say.
American Chemical Society
http://www.huliq.com/53859/hearthealthy-yak-cheese