Curried Cabbage With Toasted Peanuts

This doesn't go with lamb all that well, but it's a great way to eat cabbage.

1 head savoy cabbage, finely shredded
1 small onion
1 tsp curry powder
1/3 cup peanuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
3 tbsp chicken broth
1 tsp fresh or dried thyme

Saute the onions in olive oil until softened. Saute the shredded outer leaves over high heat first, then add the more tender inner leaves and saute over medium heat. Add the broth and curry powder, then the thyme, and braise, partly covered, for about five minutes. Add the peanuts, toss, and serve.

Perfect lamb

Thanks to Costco, I have a large number of lamb chops in my freezer that were a great deal but are too thick to do anything easy with, like grilling or broiling them. They're pretty standard loin chops, about two inches thick and three inches wide, but I guess I just don't know a good way to cook those. There are very few recipes out there for extra-thick loin chops, and cooking them as for thinner chops means they're burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. Until now! The way to do it is in a pan on the stove with a couple teaspoons of olive oil over moderately low heat, for a long time, flipping often and cooking on every side. Done this way, they were great -- pink but not bloody, tender and not tough. I spread rosemary salt over them just before cooking, which lent a nice peppery taste.

Braise at your own risk

The other night I decided to improvise a chicken khoresh and learned some important lessons.

The recipe:
1 whole chicken
1.5 or 2 pounds small turnips
2 small onions
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
2 cups chicken broth
1 small bunch parsley

Cut the chicken into ten parts. Chop the onions and saute them in olive oil. Add the chicken and saute until browned. Add turnips and coriander and broth; bring to a simmer. Simmer, covered, on low heat for 1 1/2 hours. Add the rest of the spices, the parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice.

Lessons learned:
1. Do not ever ever attempt to braise or stew chicken breast. It gets tough immediately and doesn't de-toughen at the same rate as the thighs and legs with further cooking. All the other meat in this dish was perfect, but the breasts were utterly blah. I know everyone else in the world loves to cook with chicken breast and they breed them with gigantic breasts now because that's what everyone wants, but I am frankly terrible with chicken breast, whether I'm frying it or grilling it or performing any of the accepted cooking methods. I frequently wreck it and this is no exception.

2. Turnips must always be peeled, no matter how tender and young and wonderful your local farmer claims they are. Do not believe him when he says they're so crisp and perfect that they don't even have to be peeled. It's not true.

3. If you don't want soup, use less water.

Innocent Chocolate

Where to get blood-free chocolate? Reports of child slavery and abuse on cacao farms led to an investigation by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in 2001, which found that child labor, some of it slave labor, was widespread on farms in the Ivory Coast, which in company with several other West African countries produces most of the world's chocolate.

Nestle, ADM and Cargill have already been sued, primarily over their failure to comply with the Harkin-Engel Protocol, which specified a phase-out of child labor on farms supplying major U.S. cocoa importers by July 2005. The Harkin-Engel Protocol was a voluntary industry initiative and the consequences for violating it may not be particularly great. Enforcement of pre-existing customs laws, such as Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (prohibiting importation of products made with forced or indentured labor), would prevent chocolate made with child slave labor from entering the country, but the Customs Service has pleaded a lack of enforcement resources.

Two major U.S. chocolate companies, Hershey's and M&M Mars, use large proportions of Ivory Coast chocolate in their products and claim that the supply is too homogeneous by the time they receive it to exclude cocoa produced through the use of child labor.

According to Global Exchange, Fair Trade certification standards prohibit abusive child labor. The standards only apply, however, to farms where "a significant part of the field or processing
work carried out by the producer organisation itself is done through hired labour." Small family farms of 12 acres or less, on which between two-thirds and 90% of the world's chocolate is grown according to some sources, may be permitted to employ children (their own, perhaps) without pay and receive Fair Trade certification anyway. This probably means that a Fair Trade stamp does not guarantee that the product was made without the use of child slave labor, but it may make child labor an unlikely ingredient.

TransFair USA, the organization that certifies fair-trade cocoa imports, maintains a partial list of U.S. chocolate companies that are supplied by fair-trade producers here. The list includes Dagoba, Endangered Species, Green & Blacks, Lake Champlain, Nutiva, and Sweet Earth.

A guy named Steven Millman has systematically inquired about the use of child labor in products from just about all of the major chocolate manufacturers and has compiled a list of those that seem to be child-labor free, including:
El Rey (uses only Venezuelan chocolate)
Clif Bar (does not use Ivorian chocolate)
Chocolove (does not use chocolate produced via exploited labor)
Cloud Nine (uses organic Mexican Criollo beans)
Recchiuti (uses South American beans, primarily Venezuelan)
Droste (uses Ghanaian cocoa and confirms that its sources are child-labor-free)
Dagoba (uses cocoa from the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia)
Green&Black's (uses cocoa from the Dominican Republic and Belize)
Newman's Own (uses cocoa from Costa Rica)
Rapunzel (uses cocoa from Bolivia and the Dominican Republic)
Scharffenberger (uses Ghanaian beans that are child-labor-free)
Teuscher (confirms that their bean source is child-labor-free)
Endangered Species (uses only Fair Trade cocoa)
Valrhona (uses only Venezuelan chocolate)

Unfortunately most of these confirmations date from 2001 and conditions may have changed. Scharffenberger, for instance, was recently purchased by Hershey Foods. There is nothing on their website that currently indicates where their chocolate comes from or whether they are still committed to slavery-free chocolate.

I have seen claims in several places that organic chocolate is always child-labor free because there are no organic cocoa farms in the areas where child labor is used. There is a useful table of organic, fair trade and slavery-free chocolate here. It includes, in addition to most of those previously mentioned, Sunspire, Terra Nostra, Mayordomo (Mexican-sourced), Whole Foods private label, Trader Joe's Fair Trade and Trader Joe's Organic chocolates.

For cooking, I will investigate Trader Joe's selection to see whether their Fair Trade and Organic department includes any cocoa powder, baking chocolate or chocolate chips. Droste, Newman's Own, Scharffenberger, and Valrhona are often found in supermarkets around here in various forms. For snacking, Chocolove, Dagoba, Green&Black's, and Rapunzel are pretty easy to find in any stores that are both slightly crunchy and slightly upscale (e.g. Pharmaca, Elephant Pharmacy, Rainbow Grocery, etc.).

Pasta with Cabbage and Sausage

1/2 pound whole-wheat penne
1 tbsp olive oil
2 small savoy cabbages, chopped
1 bratwurst, peeled and sliced
3 leeks, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
salt to taste

Heat olive oil. Add bratwurst and saute while chopping leeks. Add leeks; saute while chopping cabbage. Add cabbage; saute while mincing garlic. Add garlic and saute briefly; add chicken broth and simmer while pasta cooks. Towards the end of cooking, add peas. When pasta is just short of being done, drain and add to cabbage. Cook for 1 minute; add lemon juice and stir. Add cheddar cheese and stir. Serve immediately.

This recipe got excellent reviews from the chief taster, and used up a good bit of the ever-overflowing leek and greens supply. I thought it had a good balance of savory and salty and slightly lemony. I was hesitant about the cheddar cheese, but the flavor worked really well.