Oat Cuisine II - Recap
Dr. Xavier Brown, brother of the famous food personality, opens on a somber and darkened set with an important health message: those who are not eating oats or oatmeal every day are probably dying! He's even got a book about it, in which he shares lifesaving tips and includes recipes developed by his award-winning megastar brother.
Suddenly Itchy and Twitchy, Alton's lawyers, burst in as the lights come up. It seems the set is merely Alton's darkened kitchen with a few props for effect. And Doctor Xavier Brown? He's not Alton's brother at all, he's Alton himself under a false beard that Twitchy tears painfully from Alton's chin! The lawyers gather the set pieces and props, including the dust jacket of the book. Underneath it is Alton's own book, Oat Cuisine II. Seems Alton's book isn't exactly flying off the store shelves. (At several bookstores clerks busily reprice the tome lower, slap catchy sale stickers and move copies to the remainder table.) The lawyers continue their pillage, taking Alton's medical looking skeleton (a rental) and his somber white jacket and tasteful partial shirt and tie. All Alton wanted was to convince the world that oats were Good Eats!
He made one show about the goodness of oats, but no one believed him. They only wanted to laugh at his kilt. Even his lawyers never saw it! So now, he's going to try again. But the legal eagles convince him not to represent himself as a medical authority. Instead, he must appeal to culinary tastes. That, Alton can do, since oats are little delicious snowflakes that can convert many foods into good eats.
This time, Alton will stick with good, old-fashioned rolled oats, avoiding the subjects of steel cut and pinhead oats. But not all rolled oats are alike. Using a blob of pasta dough, Alton constructs a large facsimile of a groat – the fruit of the avena sativa plant, the oat. The groat is oblong and somewhat irregularly shaped. To make rolled oats, millers first hull the groat, removing the hard outer and inedible husk. They next steam the inside to soften it, then send it through rollers to flatten it. The oats go from the roller to a dryer, and sometimes to a toasting oven for additional flavor. Producers making quick cook oats take the process even further. Instead of drying the rolled oats, they cut them into smaller pieces and put then through another roller to make them even thinner before sending them to the dryer. Instant cook oats get cut and rolled again, even thinner. Alton prefers old-fashioned oats, since the quick and instant varieties tend to be very fragile and lack flavor. These recipes all use old-fashioned rolled oats.
Usually to prepare oats for a morning meal, one boils two cups of water and adds a cup of oats, then cooks this for fifteen minutes. This produces several portions of hot cereal, and only one person wanted some, so Alton must find something to do with the rest: over a cup of concentrated culinary power containing protein, complex carbohydrates, soluble and insoluble fiber. Putting this in a bowl, he adds agave syrup, a neutral flavored sweetener made from the same plant juice that eventually becomes tequila. Agave nectar has the consistency of honey and may be found in many modern megamarts or any health food store. He also adds water and olive oil.
In another bowl Alton whisks together uncooked oats, active dry yeast, kosher salt, and bread flour (measured by weight). Oats contain no gluten at all, so Alton uses bread flour because it has more gluten than all-purpose flour. He needs that gluten to capture the gasses emitted by the yeast so the bread he's making will rise. Alton adds these dry ingredients to the previously mixed wet team in three installments, integrating each before adding the next. This produces a big, sticky mess. He turns that onto a lightly floured surface and kneads it for ten minutes, adding additional flour as necessary. The final product should be slightly sticky (not “tar baby” sticky). When he has finished kneading this dough he drops it into a lightly oiled container and covers it with a cloth before moving it to a warm area to rise for an hour.
At the end of the hour, Alton punches down the dough. This short kneading removes the biggest bubbles. Next, he forms the dough into a rectangle and rolls that up to produce a log shape that fits nicely inside his loaf pan. Alton uses a non-stick pan; those without non-stick gear should oil the pan lightly to prevent the dough from sticking. He covers this with plastic and refrigerates it for at least eight hours (and up to fifteen). Alton makes this up after breakfast so he's got dough ready to make a loaf at dinnertime.
Removing the dough from the fridge (even in the cold it has risen), Alton brushes the top gently with egg wash (taking care not to collapse it) and sprinkles on toasted rolled oats. An hour in the oven bakes the loaf to an internal temperature of 210° F, making it golden brown on top. He removes his baked loaf to a rack to cool.
At his kitchen table, Alton enjoys a sandwich made from oat bread that's tasty and healthy... The camera pulls back to reveal Itchy and Twitchy flanking him. They're also enjoying sandwiches, but not enough to let Alton back onto the health claim soapbox. Alton quickly adds that he doesn't know anything about healthy eating... Recovering quickly, he asks the pair if they like waffles and receives a pair of enthusiastic yes nods!
Alton has a way to get oats into waffles. He begins with buttermilk, which he brings to room temperature. This is so acidic that bacteria cannot live in it, so there's no danger in leaving it on the counter for awhile to warm. While it does Alton toasts some rolled oats in a small skillet, which takes him about three minutes. He puts these into his food processor and spins until they're grounds to the consistency of whole wheat flour. He also preheats his waffle iron.
Alton adds three eggs to a bowl and whisks them nearly smooth, then adds some melted unsalted butter (first letting it cool a bit so as not to cook the eggs). He adds the buttermilk to that; it has to be room temperature or it will harden the butter.
At the food processor, Alton adds all-purpose flour to the ground oats, and then sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt. A few quick pulses mix these into the dry team which Alton adds to the wet team. Usually he'd do that the other way around, but this is easier since his food processor won't hold all the batter, and he's already got the wet team in a big bowl. He whisks in the dry team as three batches. This batter keeps overnight, but if refrigerated it should spend a half hour warming before it hits the iron. But Alton is hungry now, so he doesn't refrigerate his waffles.
Cooked waffles retain their heat for a few minutes if wrapped in a kitchen towel. To keep them warm longer, the oven set to its lowest possible temperature works nicely. Because oat flour does not hydrate as readily as wheat flour, these waffles offer a delicious contrast of crunchy and soft. Itchy and Twitchy are devouring large stacks of them...
Alton sorts through an enormous stack of cookbooks. He's looking for an oatmeal cookie recipe that's entirely made of oats and none of his books has one. All of the recipes in them call for at least some wheat flour. Alton is sure he can do better.
He starts by toasting some rolled oats, but because he needs many more, he toasts this batch in his oven: 375° F for about twenty minutes, until lightly golden. He grinds some of these to a flour in his food processor and reserves the rest. While that happens he adds unsalted butter, brown sugar and white sugar to his stand mixer bowl and blends these with the paddle at medium speed to produce a smooth, light mixture. Regular viewers will recognize the beginning of the creaming method Alton has demonstrated before: creaming, add liquid ingredients, add dry ingredients, add optional ingredients. Here, the liquids are egg and vanilla, which he beats into a smooth mix.
To the pulverized oats, Alton adds cinnamon, baking powder and a pinch or two of kosher salt, mixing these into a dry team with a few quick pulses of the food processor. He decants that mixture onto a paper plate, a good tool for introducing dry ingredients into a mixer bowl. It can flex, which simplifies adding dry ingredients without creating a mess. He slowly adds his oat mixture, allowing it to integrate, and then turns his attention to the optional ingredient; raisins.
Alton has always considered raisins very optional in cooking, but most oatmeal cookie recipes call for them, so he's going to add some. How, then, to make them more palatable? The answer is rum: an overnight soak dark rum adds flavor and moisture to the raisins! He adds those and the reserved toasted oats, giving the mixer's slow speed a few minutes to produce a smooth batter from all of this.
Using an ounce and a half size ice cream disher, he portions the now mixed batter onto a parchment lined half sheet. Filled, these sheets go into the oven (set to 375° F) for 12-14 minutes. Halfway into this time, Alton turns the sheet to ensure an even baking. They're done when just beginning to brown at the edges. Those who prefer very crunchy cookies can bake them a little longer: 15-17 minutes. The unbaked cookie portions may also be frozen on the pan, bagged, and saved for as long as a year, making relatively quick oatmeal cookies possible at a later date. Alton writes instructions on his freezer bag so he'll know how to prepare the cookies later.
Alton shares these treats with his crack legal team, commenting that if he knew anything about the health benefits of oats, he'd be able to share with folks how oats can lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol. Alas, Itchy and Twitchy don't know the difference, so Alton leads them to the kitchen for a lesson.
Cholesterol, Alton advises his crack legal team, is naturally occurring waxy (fatty) substance manufactured by the liver and used throughout the body. It is a building block for everything from cellular membranes to sex hormones (here Alton must pause while the litigators get the giggles out of their system). Because cholesterol is lipoid it does not mix with blood (which is aqueous) very well. To transport it, metabolic processes bind it to specialized carrier molecules which include the low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs. These molecules bind to fat and can dissolve in water. The LDLs deliver cholesterol to cells, but the cell may reject such a the delivery, usually because it already has enough (this occurs when the person's diet is rich in animal fats). The LDL then deposits cholesterol pretty much anywhere, but the worst place is in the epithelium (lining) of the arteries. There it eventually attracts the attention of white blood cells, initiating a series of reactions that ultimately lead to a dangerous blood vessel disease called atheroscleosis, a narrowing of the arteries. The consequences of this depend on the degree of narrowing and the location of the problem, but are usually bad. However, high-density lipoproteins can gather that cholesterol and return it to the liver for reuse, preventing or at least lessening the problem. Since LDLs outnumber HDLs by roughly three to one, the HDLs have difficulty keeping up, but oats can help.
The liver delivers some of the cholesterol it manufactures to the small intestine in the form of digestive bile salts, which are among the compounds that digest food for absorption. Oats contain fiber, and one of the fiber components is beta-glucan, which can bind to cholesterol, preventing its resorption by the small intestine. Instead, the bound cholesterol gets “thrown out with the trash”, in a manner of speaking. Sufficient research supports this mechanism that the FDA permits oat makers to include cholesterol reduction claims on the packaging of their products.
Having educated his attorneys and sent them away, Alton next considers the hot climate in most of South America, where folks don't want to cook or eat oatmeal. How can they get the same benefits? Much oat goodness is water-soluble so it can be coaxed into a beverage. The beverage is called refresco de avino and it starts with a quart of warm water in a large jar. To that Alton adds piloncillo (an unrefined Mexican sugar), rolled oats, the zest of a lime. Finally, he adds cardomom seeds and gives this a shake. He lets that steep for a few hours and strains out the solids to produce a tea-colored refreshment he claims is better than soda.
Itchy and Twitchy are sleeping off all the food, which permits the return of “Dr. Xavier Brown” and his book, and the suggestion that oats could maybe... possibly... save one's life! They're delicious and rich in beneficial biochemicals. They're even rumored to have a calming effect (the “doctor” smirks at the sleeping lawyers). So... buy the book, and he'll see you next time on Good Eats!
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Suddenly Itchy and Twitchy, Alton's lawyers, burst in as the lights come up. It seems the set is merely Alton's darkened kitchen with a few props for effect. And Doctor Xavier Brown? He's not Alton's brother at all, he's Alton himself under a false beard that Twitchy tears painfully from Alton's chin! The lawyers gather the set pieces and props, including the dust jacket of the book. Underneath it is Alton's own book, Oat Cuisine II. Seems Alton's book isn't exactly flying off the store shelves. (At several bookstores clerks busily reprice the tome lower, slap catchy sale stickers and move copies to the remainder table.) The lawyers continue their pillage, taking Alton's medical looking skeleton (a rental) and his somber white jacket and tasteful partial shirt and tie. All Alton wanted was to convince the world that oats were Good Eats!
He made one show about the goodness of oats, but no one believed him. They only wanted to laugh at his kilt. Even his lawyers never saw it! So now, he's going to try again. But the legal eagles convince him not to represent himself as a medical authority. Instead, he must appeal to culinary tastes. That, Alton can do, since oats are little delicious snowflakes that can convert many foods into good eats.
This time, Alton will stick with good, old-fashioned rolled oats, avoiding the subjects of steel cut and pinhead oats. But not all rolled oats are alike. Using a blob of pasta dough, Alton constructs a large facsimile of a groat – the fruit of the avena sativa plant, the oat. The groat is oblong and somewhat irregularly shaped. To make rolled oats, millers first hull the groat, removing the hard outer and inedible husk. They next steam the inside to soften it, then send it through rollers to flatten it. The oats go from the roller to a dryer, and sometimes to a toasting oven for additional flavor. Producers making quick cook oats take the process even further. Instead of drying the rolled oats, they cut them into smaller pieces and put then through another roller to make them even thinner before sending them to the dryer. Instant cook oats get cut and rolled again, even thinner. Alton prefers old-fashioned oats, since the quick and instant varieties tend to be very fragile and lack flavor. These recipes all use old-fashioned rolled oats.
Usually to prepare oats for a morning meal, one boils two cups of water and adds a cup of oats, then cooks this for fifteen minutes. This produces several portions of hot cereal, and only one person wanted some, so Alton must find something to do with the rest: over a cup of concentrated culinary power containing protein, complex carbohydrates, soluble and insoluble fiber. Putting this in a bowl, he adds agave syrup, a neutral flavored sweetener made from the same plant juice that eventually becomes tequila. Agave nectar has the consistency of honey and may be found in many modern megamarts or any health food store. He also adds water and olive oil.
In another bowl Alton whisks together uncooked oats, active dry yeast, kosher salt, and bread flour (measured by weight). Oats contain no gluten at all, so Alton uses bread flour because it has more gluten than all-purpose flour. He needs that gluten to capture the gasses emitted by the yeast so the bread he's making will rise. Alton adds these dry ingredients to the previously mixed wet team in three installments, integrating each before adding the next. This produces a big, sticky mess. He turns that onto a lightly floured surface and kneads it for ten minutes, adding additional flour as necessary. The final product should be slightly sticky (not “tar baby” sticky). When he has finished kneading this dough he drops it into a lightly oiled container and covers it with a cloth before moving it to a warm area to rise for an hour.
At the end of the hour, Alton punches down the dough. This short kneading removes the biggest bubbles. Next, he forms the dough into a rectangle and rolls that up to produce a log shape that fits nicely inside his loaf pan. Alton uses a non-stick pan; those without non-stick gear should oil the pan lightly to prevent the dough from sticking. He covers this with plastic and refrigerates it for at least eight hours (and up to fifteen). Alton makes this up after breakfast so he's got dough ready to make a loaf at dinnertime.
Removing the dough from the fridge (even in the cold it has risen), Alton brushes the top gently with egg wash (taking care not to collapse it) and sprinkles on toasted rolled oats. An hour in the oven bakes the loaf to an internal temperature of 210° F, making it golden brown on top. He removes his baked loaf to a rack to cool.
At his kitchen table, Alton enjoys a sandwich made from oat bread that's tasty and healthy... The camera pulls back to reveal Itchy and Twitchy flanking him. They're also enjoying sandwiches, but not enough to let Alton back onto the health claim soapbox. Alton quickly adds that he doesn't know anything about healthy eating... Recovering quickly, he asks the pair if they like waffles and receives a pair of enthusiastic yes nods!
Alton has a way to get oats into waffles. He begins with buttermilk, which he brings to room temperature. This is so acidic that bacteria cannot live in it, so there's no danger in leaving it on the counter for awhile to warm. While it does Alton toasts some rolled oats in a small skillet, which takes him about three minutes. He puts these into his food processor and spins until they're grounds to the consistency of whole wheat flour. He also preheats his waffle iron.
Alton adds three eggs to a bowl and whisks them nearly smooth, then adds some melted unsalted butter (first letting it cool a bit so as not to cook the eggs). He adds the buttermilk to that; it has to be room temperature or it will harden the butter.
At the food processor, Alton adds all-purpose flour to the ground oats, and then sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt. A few quick pulses mix these into the dry team which Alton adds to the wet team. Usually he'd do that the other way around, but this is easier since his food processor won't hold all the batter, and he's already got the wet team in a big bowl. He whisks in the dry team as three batches. This batter keeps overnight, but if refrigerated it should spend a half hour warming before it hits the iron. But Alton is hungry now, so he doesn't refrigerate his waffles.
Cooked waffles retain their heat for a few minutes if wrapped in a kitchen towel. To keep them warm longer, the oven set to its lowest possible temperature works nicely. Because oat flour does not hydrate as readily as wheat flour, these waffles offer a delicious contrast of crunchy and soft. Itchy and Twitchy are devouring large stacks of them...
Alton sorts through an enormous stack of cookbooks. He's looking for an oatmeal cookie recipe that's entirely made of oats and none of his books has one. All of the recipes in them call for at least some wheat flour. Alton is sure he can do better.
He starts by toasting some rolled oats, but because he needs many more, he toasts this batch in his oven: 375° F for about twenty minutes, until lightly golden. He grinds some of these to a flour in his food processor and reserves the rest. While that happens he adds unsalted butter, brown sugar and white sugar to his stand mixer bowl and blends these with the paddle at medium speed to produce a smooth, light mixture. Regular viewers will recognize the beginning of the creaming method Alton has demonstrated before: creaming, add liquid ingredients, add dry ingredients, add optional ingredients. Here, the liquids are egg and vanilla, which he beats into a smooth mix.
To the pulverized oats, Alton adds cinnamon, baking powder and a pinch or two of kosher salt, mixing these into a dry team with a few quick pulses of the food processor. He decants that mixture onto a paper plate, a good tool for introducing dry ingredients into a mixer bowl. It can flex, which simplifies adding dry ingredients without creating a mess. He slowly adds his oat mixture, allowing it to integrate, and then turns his attention to the optional ingredient; raisins.
Alton has always considered raisins very optional in cooking, but most oatmeal cookie recipes call for them, so he's going to add some. How, then, to make them more palatable? The answer is rum: an overnight soak dark rum adds flavor and moisture to the raisins! He adds those and the reserved toasted oats, giving the mixer's slow speed a few minutes to produce a smooth batter from all of this.
Using an ounce and a half size ice cream disher, he portions the now mixed batter onto a parchment lined half sheet. Filled, these sheets go into the oven (set to 375° F) for 12-14 minutes. Halfway into this time, Alton turns the sheet to ensure an even baking. They're done when just beginning to brown at the edges. Those who prefer very crunchy cookies can bake them a little longer: 15-17 minutes. The unbaked cookie portions may also be frozen on the pan, bagged, and saved for as long as a year, making relatively quick oatmeal cookies possible at a later date. Alton writes instructions on his freezer bag so he'll know how to prepare the cookies later.
Alton shares these treats with his crack legal team, commenting that if he knew anything about the health benefits of oats, he'd be able to share with folks how oats can lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol. Alas, Itchy and Twitchy don't know the difference, so Alton leads them to the kitchen for a lesson.
Cholesterol, Alton advises his crack legal team, is naturally occurring waxy (fatty) substance manufactured by the liver and used throughout the body. It is a building block for everything from cellular membranes to sex hormones (here Alton must pause while the litigators get the giggles out of their system). Because cholesterol is lipoid it does not mix with blood (which is aqueous) very well. To transport it, metabolic processes bind it to specialized carrier molecules which include the low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs. These molecules bind to fat and can dissolve in water. The LDLs deliver cholesterol to cells, but the cell may reject such a the delivery, usually because it already has enough (this occurs when the person's diet is rich in animal fats). The LDL then deposits cholesterol pretty much anywhere, but the worst place is in the epithelium (lining) of the arteries. There it eventually attracts the attention of white blood cells, initiating a series of reactions that ultimately lead to a dangerous blood vessel disease called atheroscleosis, a narrowing of the arteries. The consequences of this depend on the degree of narrowing and the location of the problem, but are usually bad. However, high-density lipoproteins can gather that cholesterol and return it to the liver for reuse, preventing or at least lessening the problem. Since LDLs outnumber HDLs by roughly three to one, the HDLs have difficulty keeping up, but oats can help.
The liver delivers some of the cholesterol it manufactures to the small intestine in the form of digestive bile salts, which are among the compounds that digest food for absorption. Oats contain fiber, and one of the fiber components is beta-glucan, which can bind to cholesterol, preventing its resorption by the small intestine. Instead, the bound cholesterol gets “thrown out with the trash”, in a manner of speaking. Sufficient research supports this mechanism that the FDA permits oat makers to include cholesterol reduction claims on the packaging of their products.
Having educated his attorneys and sent them away, Alton next considers the hot climate in most of South America, where folks don't want to cook or eat oatmeal. How can they get the same benefits? Much oat goodness is water-soluble so it can be coaxed into a beverage. The beverage is called refresco de avino and it starts with a quart of warm water in a large jar. To that Alton adds piloncillo (an unrefined Mexican sugar), rolled oats, the zest of a lime. Finally, he adds cardomom seeds and gives this a shake. He lets that steep for a few hours and strains out the solids to produce a tea-colored refreshment he claims is better than soda.
Itchy and Twitchy are sleeping off all the food, which permits the return of “Dr. Xavier Brown” and his book, and the suggestion that oats could maybe... possibly... save one's life! They're delicious and rich in beneficial biochemicals. They're even rumored to have a calming effect (the “doctor” smirks at the sleeping lawyers). So... buy the book, and he'll see you next time on Good Eats!
Share this article with your friends
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