And the New Year Rolls Around Again - Best of 2007

It seems just like yesterday that the New Year of 2007 was upon us and I was happily spending hours of my day browsing through all the food blogs. You see I had only just discovered the wonderful world of food blogging. When I realised that I could also blog and it was not so technologically challenging either, I decided that my New Years resolution would be to start a blog of my own. But honestly, I had absolutely no idea on how to go about it. I decided to enlist the help of my very tech savvy 16 year old (it is amazing how the kids of today just pick up these things). But try pinning down a teenager to do something as "boring" as setting up a food blog for his mom.

January rolled around, then came February and still no signs of my blog starting. So finally, I took the plunge on my own, did a simple google search, came to blogger.com and close to 50 posts later here I am.

It has been a pretty eventful journey and I have enjoyed every single moment of it. Once someone asked me " what do you get out of blogging?" I just said that it was just a hobby. Just a hobby? You must be joking. This, for me is now an all consuming passion. It gives me so much fulfilment and so much to look forward to. I have made so many new friends as a direct result of my hobby. My creativity is blossoming in so many fields. What more can I say? And what more can I ask for?

When Nupur of One Hot Stove came out with this event of looking back at 2007 and picking the best from it, for me it was a lovely walk back. It was very hard too (how can choose the best among your babies? Each one is so special in its own way).

In some the pictures are great, in some the content, in others the recipe has been a huge hit at home... But here I am doing my best and putting down my favourites.

I took a family poll on what I should feature as the best post in my blog, and unanimously, the answer was the Chocolate Brownie. Everyone here loved the picture, the write up and the final product. Oh there was no doubting that, the final product was absolutely scrumptious. This is a definite make once a fortnight recipe.

My personal favourite just has to be the Falafel. It was an outstanding recipe and very new for us. This recipe was a nice introduction for my children to the Middle Eastern cuisine. They throughly enjoyed it too.

Next comes the Dibba Roti. This is one recipe I always associate with my mom's cooking. She made this very often when we were kids. She improvised and made it in one of those contraptions they called ovens those days ( those round thingies without any temperature control whatsoever, yet Mom always managed to turn out perfect cakes and bakes in them)

The Hara Bhara Kababs comes in next. It was the one which garnered the maximum comments for the first time which was extremely exciting for me.

The last one I shall put down are the Baby Butter Naans. They was consumed so heartily by all at home when I made them and they enjoyed every morsel. Ans personally, I loved the name. It was just so adorable.

My one regret for this past year is that I did not take part in as many blogging events as I would like to have had. I find, the events expand one's repertoire, brings a lot of variety into food made at home, and introduce new tastes to everyone in the family.

My plans for the coming year will surely include taking part in more blogging events. I have been a little lax this year what with ill health and then just being generally busy.

The other thing will have to be that I have post a lot more, a lot lot more. I will make up this coming year for sure.

Thanks Nupur for this lovely walk back into the past few months. I know what you mean when you say you write and then forget about it. It was so enjoyable going through all the baby steps again and seeing my growth as a cook, photographer and most of all a writer.

Possible Reasons For Use Of Spices

This is an extremely interesting article on the reasons why some cultures tend to use more spices than the others. I always wondered why Indian food was so full of spice as opposed continental food which is pretty bland.
A lot in this article made sense to me.

Food Bacteria-Spice Survey Shows Why Some Cultures Like It Hot

Fans of hot, spicy cuisine can thank nasty bacteria and other foodborne pathogens for the recipes that come -- not so coincidentally -- from countries with hot climates. Humans' use of antimicrobial spices developed in parallel with food-spoilage microorganisms, Cornell University biologists have demonstrated in a international survey of spice use in cooking.
The same chemical compounds that protect the spiciest spice plants from their natural enemies are at work today in foods from parts of the world where -- before refrigeration -- food-spoilage microbes were an even more serious threat to human health and survival than they are today, Jennifer Billing and Paul W. Sherman report in the March 1998 issue of the journal"Quarterly Review of Biology".
"The proximate reason for spice use obviously is to enhance food palatability," says Sherman, an evolutionary biologist and professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell. "But why do spices taste good? Traits that are beneficial are transmitted both culturally and genetically,and that includes taste receptors in our mouths and our taste for certain flavors. People who enjoyed food with antibacterial spices probably were healthier, especially in hot climates. They lived longer and left more offspring. And they taught their offspring and others: 'This is how tocook a mastodon.' We believe the ultimate reason for using spices is to kill food-borne bacteria and fungi."
Sherman credits Billing, a Cornell undergraduate student of biology at thetime of the research, with compiling many of the data required to make the microbe-spice connection: More than 4,570 recipes from 93 cookbooks representing traditional, meat-based cuisines of 36 countries; the temperature and precipitation levels of each country; the horticultural ranges of 43 spice plants; and the antibacterial properties of each spice.
Garlic, onion, allspice and oregano, for example, were found to be the best all-around bacteria killers (they kill everything), followed by thyme,cinnamon, tarragon and cumin (any of which kill up to 80 percent of bacteria). Capsicums, including chilies and other hot peppers, are in the middle of the antimicrobial pack (killing or inhibiting up to 75 percent of bacteria), while pepper of the white or black variety inhibits 25 percentof bacteria, as do ginger, anise seed, celery seed and the juices of lemons and limes.
The Cornell researchers report in the article, "Countries with hotter climates used spices more frequently than countries with cooler climates.Indeed, in hot countries nearly every meat-based recipe calls for at least one spice, and most include many spices, especially the potent spices,whereas in cooler counties substantial fractions of dishes are prepared without spices, or with just a few." As a result, the estimated fraction of food-spoilage bacteria inhibited by the spices in each recipe is greater in hot than in cold climates.
Accordingly, countries like Thailand, the Philippines, India and Malaysia are at the top of the hot climate-hot food list, while Sweden, Finland and Norway are at the bottom. The United States and China are somewhere in the middle, although the Cornell researchers studied these two countries'cuisines by region and found significant latitude-related correlations.Which helps explain why crawfish etoufée is spicier than New England clam chowder.
The biologists did consider several alternative explanations for spice use and discounted all but one. The problem with the "eat-to-sweat" hypothesis-- that people in steamy places eat spicy food to cool down with perspiration -- is that not all spices make people sweat, Sherman says,"and there are better ways to cool down -- like moving into the shade."The idea that people use spices to disguise the taste of spoiled food, he says, "ignores the health dangers of ingesting spoiled food." And people probably aren't eating spices for their nutritive value, the biologist says, because the same macronutrients are available in similar amounts in common vegetables, which are eaten in much greater quantities.
However the micronutrient hypothesis -- that spices provide trace amounts of anti-oxidants or other chemicals to aid digestion -- could be true and still not exclude the antimicrobial explanation, Sherman says. However,this hypothesis does not explain why people in hot climates need more micro-nutrients, he adds. The antimicrobial hypothesis does explain this.
The study of Darwinian gastronomy is a bit of a stretch for an evolutionary biologist like Sherman, who normally focuses his research on the role of natural selection in animal social behavior and is best known for his studies of one of nature's most social (and unusual-looking) creatures, the naked mole-rat ("Heterocephalus glaber") of Africa. But eating is definitely one of the more social behavior of "Homo sapiens"s, he maintains, and it's a good way to see the interaction between cultural evolution and biological function. "I believe that recipes are a record ofthe history of the co evolutionary race between us and our parasites. The microbes are competing with us for the same food," Sherman says."Everything we do with food -- drying, cooking, smoking, salting or adding spices -- is an attempt to keep from being poisoned by our microscopic competitors. They're constantly mutating and evolving to stay ahead of us.One way we reduce food-borne illnesses is to add another spice to the recipe. Of course that makes the food taste different, and the people who learn to like the new taste are healthier for it."
For biology student Billing, the spice research for a senior honors thesis took her to an unfamiliar field, food science, and to the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, where the library contains one of the world's largest collections of cookbooks. Now that the bacteria-spice connection is revealed, librarians everywhere may want to cross-index cookbooks under "food safety." And spice racks may start appearing in pharmacies.

Top 30 Spices with Antimicrobial Properties
(Listed from greatest to least inhibition of food-spoilage bacteria)
Source: "Antimicrobial Functions of Spices: Why Some Like It Hot,"Jennifer Billing and Paul W. Sherman, "The Quarterly Review of Biology",Vol. 73, No.1, March 1998

1. Garlic
2. Onion
3. Allspice
4. Oregano
5. Thyme
6. Cinnamon
7. Tarragon
8. Cumin
9. Cloves
10. Lemon grass
11. Bay leaf
12. Capsicums
13. Rosemary
14. Marjoram
15. Mustard
16. Caraway
17. Mint
18. Sage
19. Fennel
20. Coriander
21. Dill
22. Nutmeg
23. Basil
24. Parsley
25. Cardamom
26. Pepper (white/black)
27. Ginger
28. Anise seed
29. Celery seed
30. Lemon/lime

Source of article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/03/980305053307.htm