Tag Archives: Milk

Foods made with milk from cows, sheep, goats including yogurts and cheeses.

🔴 Naan Pizza. Convenience comes at a cost.


Ingredients count. Those ingredients assembled above are the ones I use when I make naan pizza. It’s really tasty. And it doesn’t take a lot of time to assemble and cook. But sourcing the right ingredients is crucial. From left to right going counter clockwise, here’s what I need to assemble:

Red onion. Easy to pick up in most supermarkets.

Fresh Mozzarella. If you don’t live near a market or grocer that makes fresh mozzarella, you’re out of luck. Unless you’re willing to make your own which I’ve been told is pretty easy to do. I lucked out because both in the city and where I live in the Hudson Valley we have good sources.

Jarred Pesto. Italian industrial manufacturers have done a credible job with this classic olive oil, basil, parmigiana, pine nut mixture. For me at least. The brand I used depends on what the store I shop in carries. I avoid any brand that contains seed oil, natural flavors, flavor extracts, whey, starch, flours. Why avoid seed oil? Because pesto needs to be made with olive oil to taste good.

Marinara Sauce. As with pesto, the brand depends on the store I shop in. I avoid flavor additives of any kind and I look for whole peeled tomatoes instead of tomato purée.

Naan. The best tasting naan I’ve ever used was an artisan product made on a small scale and carried locally when we lived in New York City. Now that we’ve moved to the Hudson valley, I need to make do with what is available. The naan pictured above is an industrially formulated product made with a predictable set of dough conditioners, commodity seed oils, mold inhibitors, cosmetic additives, and extracts. It’s not as chewy or clean tasting as the naan I used to use but it works and it’s available.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

My naan pizza has two things going for it – taste and convenience. Well except for the time I spend sourcing. But I’m a fanatic when it comes to sourcing. If I could find a chewier, freshly baked tradition naan, I’d track it down too. But my choices are limited to what is reasonably available, so I need to compromise and settle for well crated shelf stable product formulated with a couple of cosmetic additives.

Pizza has many positive attributes going for it, but healthy is not one of them. So we’re already in the territory of comparative unhealthiness. I’m not even sure if the low-fat, low sodium versions meet the austere criteria favored by the food police. On the other hand, my naan pizza has a healthier nutrient profile than commodity brands or popular take out offerings. And because I use good quality ingredients which are flavorful in and of themselves, I don’t need to use as much salt.

🟡Steamed Artichokes. Exceptions to every rule.

The artichoke may be the most daunting vegetable to challenge human culinary creativity. Thorny on the outside. Tough and fibrous on the inside. Except of course for the tip of each leaf and that artichoke heart which is savory, delicate, but inedible unless the choke is removed. The artichokes pictured above are French from a farmers market just outside of Paris. But they look just like the artichokes I used to eat growing up in California.

My preferred preparation is to steam artichokes and serve them cold or room temperature with a dressing part whole milk yogurt and part commercial mayonnaise.

But 66% calories UPF! How is that possible?  How can such a simple preparation be so significantly ultra-processed? The answer is because it’s customary to count UPF by weight when describing supermarket shelf space but to count UPF by calories when describing consumption.

That means we need to check both ingredients and calories. The artichokes themselves are minimally processed of course. My plain yogurt is processed. Milk becomes yogurt through fermentation, a traditional processing method that preserves whole milk by means of lactic acid.

The culprit is the commercial mayonnaise. I make the dressing 2 parts yogurt to one part mayonnaise. By weight, the mayonnaise constitutes only 12% UPF of the weigh of the sauce. By calories, the numbers look a lot different however. The ingredients for a good off the shelf mayo starts with oil, usually soybean or canola, eggs, vinegar, salt, sometimes sugar, preservatives, flavors. It’s the presence of preservatives and flavors that determine degree of processing but it’s the oil that determines the calorie contribution. So it’s the mayo that is responsible for that scary percentage –  66% UPF. And that’s the reason my steamed artichokes get a yellow 🟡 dot.

Do I know how to make my own mayonnaise? Yes I do. Am I going to stop using off the shelf mayo because it has added flavors and preservatives. No way.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Here’s my take on flavor additives and preservatives.

• Preservatives. I don’t have a problem with their use. Some are better than others, but the way I see things, a preservative is better than food poisoning.

• Flavors. I do have a problem with added flavors because I want flavor to come from the food on the plate. It also doesn’t matter to me if flavor is laboratory engineered or extracted from natural ingredients. I avoid both. Flavor should come from quality ingredients. Like robust freshly harvested artichokes. Or naturally fermented plain yogurt. But I don’t get concerned when the manufacturer adds a flavor to the mayo unless I am willing to make time to do the grunt work myself.