Category — Wine

So what’s been stirring up in the kitchen? Well, apparently a super secret spy has. Many may wonder how this came to be, so here goes.

Julia Child, born in 1912 didn’t exactly know what she would be doing 30 years from then. After graduating from college, she went into business as an advertising writer. When World War II broke out, she felt the urge to serve her country, but since she was 6’2” (imagine that – very easy target), she wasn’t qualified for the army. So instead she volunteered her services at the OSS Headquarters; Office of Strategic Services (previous version of CIA). She hoped to become a spy, but at first she was assigned clerical work.

Later she worked with the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section and developed the infamous shark repellant for the Navy. It was between 1944 and 1945 when she was stationed in China that she gained access to top security clearances. She dealt with lots of classified information and messages.

So how does Julia go from this to a chef? Well, after meeting her husband, Paul Child, another OSS officer, she fell in love and soon married him in September 1946. He was stationed to France, she came along then fell in love with something else…French cuisine. From then she attended Le Cordon Bleu and became a chef with a national TV audience (this may be how you know her).

There was always speculation that Julia Child was a spy, but they were always dismissed – until recently when documents were shown of her employment with the OSS. Unfortunately, she died two days before her 92nd birthday in 2004, but her recipes definitely still live on. See one of her infamous entrees below:

What you need:

· 4 cups sliced leeks, white part only
· 4 cups diced potatoes, old or baking potatoes recommended
· 6 to 7 cups water
· 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons salt or to taste
· 1/2 cup or more sour cream, heavy cream, or crème fraîche, optional
· 1 Tablespoon fresh chives or parsley, minced

If you won’t be using pureeing methods, you just need to chop up the veggies neatly. You will also need a 3-quart saucepan that has a lid. First you place the leeks, potatoes and water into the pan, then bring to a boil. Add a little salt and cover the plan slightly – simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes when the veggies become tender; this is when you will taste it and decide whether more seasoning is needed. Once it tastes fine, let it chill and add a bit more cream if you’d like. Taste again; make sure it has enough seasoning. Once okay, sprinkle the soup with chives or parsley and serve!

Red wine has been credited with health attributes from slimming down to lowering cholesterol. Imagine my surprise when I read in an article in Mother Earth News that it may also fight cancer. That’s because the most powerful cancer-fighting compound we can get from food is resveratrol, found in the skin and seeds of red grapes. Apparently, resveratrol not only protects the heart but also has been proven to help fight cancer in it’s early reversible stage by preventing cancer cells from developing and growing.

Red wine might be the most fun way to get these amazing benefits, but eating the grapes or drinking plain grape juice is just as good. A tip when buying grapes is to choose the seeded variety for maximum health benefit. If you chew and swallow the seeds as well as the skin and pulp you get the added plus of an antioxident called oligomeric proanthocyanidin which researchers claim slows the aging process and protects the skin and internal organs from the bad effects of stress and toxins.

I love when my evening relaxation habits turn out to have proven health benefits. We can all rest assured that there are some things that are fun and taste good that are also good for you!

Thanks to the amazing cooking skills of my wonderful and talented girlfriend, I was able to try the recipe mentioned in my previous post (see photo above). Since I have no cooking skills whatsoever, the only food-related tasks my girlfriend trusts me with are pouring the drinks and doing the dishes (both of which I am very good at having done them extensively in college).

The turkey had a delicious, subtle pinot flavor. The mixed vegetables included broccoli, carrots, snap peas, and water chestnuts (from a Birds Eye Steamfresh bag). Adding in the wine and the iced tea (a green and black tea mix with lemon), we should have had enough polyphenols to keep the malondialdehyde (MDA) at bay. Of course I have no idea whether this worked or not since neither one of us felt like drawing our own blood afterwards. Maybe someday I’ll have the funds to setup a clinical lab in the basement, but for now I’ll just have to trust the scientists on this one. Either way, it tasted good, so I’m considering this experiment a success.

An interesting study was just published in The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal that looked at how adding red wine to a meal (by drinking and cooking with it) reduced the after dinner levels of cytotoxic lipid peroxidation products. “Cytotoxic lipid peroxidation products” is just a fancy way of describing some of the harmful byproducts of a diet high in meat and fried foods. One of the theories is that the polyphenols in healthy fruits and vegetables work within the digestive tract by counteracting the effects of bad foods before they are absorbed. The scientists recruited 10 volunteers (4 men and 6 women) and gave them each three versions of a turkey meal. The setup was as follows:

Meal A:
250 g of turkey
glass of water

Meal B:
250 g of turkey soaked in red wine after cooking
200 ml glass of red wine

Meal C:
250 g of turkey soaked in red wine before cooking
200 ml glass of red wine

It was a randomized crossover study which meant that all participants ate all three meals (three weeks apart). Levels of lipid peroxidation in the blood where measured using malondialdehyde (MDA), a carcinogenic initiator associated with the breakdown fats (MDA is known to cause cancer in mice and damage DNA in human cells)

The results of the experiment are shown in the graph below. Soaking the turkey in wine before cooking completely prevented any increase in plasma MDA (see this paper for levels of MDA in different foods). In fact, half of the individuals tested actually lowered their MDA levels below their pre-meal baseline with Meal C. This is good news because it shows how red wine polyphenols can offset some of the cancer risk associated with consumption of meat. It may also suggest that meal times may be the best time to take antioxidant supplements. So if you don’t have time to marinate your meat in red wine before you cook, you could probably get some benefit from drinking red wine with your meal and perhaps taking a few capsules of whole grape extract beforehand.

Incidentally, I’m not sure why they didn’t also test a meal consisting of a glass of red wine and plain turkey, because that’s seems like the most common scenario. I’m also glad the pre-soaked turkey gave the best result because dipping already cooked turkey in wine doesn’t sound very appetizing. Something like this grilled marinated turkey breast sound really good (although I’d recommend substituting steamed asparagus for the fried rice).