Nut oils expand Americans' culinary vision

AS A PEOPLE, the French are notoriously difficult to pin down or categorize, but their food is easy to understand.

Waverly Root, the American journalist who served as Paris correspondent for the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune in the 1940s and '50s, had ample opportunity to study la belle cuisine, and in 1958, he summed up his observations in a book called "The Food of France." His premise, widely quoted and generally accepted, was that the entire country could be mapped into three zones: The north, with its rich dairy tradition, is the domain of butter; the center of the country, with its pigs, ducks and geese, is the land of fat; and the south, with its olive groves, is the land of oil.

I encountered Root's book and his theory at the same moment in my life that I encountered France itself, touring the country with his book tucked under my arm as a guide. And I intuitively adopted his theory, not only when it comes to the food of France but when it comes to the food of any place or any people.

Antoine Brillat-Savarin said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are." But Root one-upped him by saying roughly, "Tell me what kind of fat you use, and I will tell you what kind of people you are."

For a 20th-century North American, this was somewhat disturbing. For most of that century at least, our preferred fat — as a people — was the refined, partly hydrogenated oils of cottonseed and soy, known collectively as vegetable shortening. It was an ingredient in almost everything we ate. A product of industry and not so much of the soil, hydrogenated fat is produced in rural factories, then shipped to the urban centers. What kind of people did that make us? You might say we were highly refined, industrialized and smart, but you could just as easily say that we were mechanized, cheap and completely out of touch.

It doesn't help to know that the original "all-vegetable" shortening, Crisco, was developed by Proctor & Gamble at the turn of the last century as an ingredient in soap-making, but its similarity to lard and its stability at room temperature inspired its creators to market it as a cooking fat. The name was a contracted form of "crystallized cottonseed oil." Similarly produced hydrogenated oils were quickly adopted by the burgeoning snack-foods industry and eventually by fast-food restaurants.

At the turn of this century, heightened awareness of the dangers of trans fats in hydrogenated oils prompted shortening manufacturers to reformulate shortenings to make them lower in trans fat, and this century's Crisco, made by the J.M. Smucker company, is made from a mixture of palm and soybean oils; it has "0 grams trans fat per serving." Just watch that serving size.

A broader look at the fat we eat offers some reassurance. Americans have always been a diverse lot, even harder to peg than the French, and we have always used a wide variety of fats and oils.

If hydrogenated oils were a replacement for lard, it stands to reason that we once ate a lot of lard. We ate a lot of butter, too. Olives for oil were planted in California before we were even a country. And we have always been quick to adapt to whatever the environment — real or manufactured — had to offer.

In recent years, a walk down the aisles of any American supermarket reveals an incredibly wide selection of fats and oils.

Most encouraging is the variety of oils. Olive oils, imported and domestic, range from pale, almost clear, to golden, and vibrant green, so dense in their unrefined glory that the harsh industrialized light of the supermarket can barely pass through them.

And there are, at least in better grocery stores, wonderful specialty oils; dense, white coconut oil and expeller-pressed palm kernel oil, and oils pressed from sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and flax. My favorites are the nut oils: walnut, hazelnut and almond oils are often available under several labels; the most widely available brand is Spectrum.

I don't doubt for an instant that Americans eat too much fat, and I am fairly certain that too much of that fat is still the cheap, processed kind that we might be better off without.

But if one were to apply Waverly Root's "domain" theory to North America today, we might be deemed the domain of diversity, maybe even the domain of nuts, and I'd be fine with that.

Greg Atkinson is a Seattle-area chef, author and consultant. He can be reached at greg@westcoastcooking.com.

Sun-Dried Tomato and Almond Pesto

Makes about 1 ½ cups

This spread, made with almonds and sun-dried tomatoes, derives its light, satisfying texture from almond oil, which can be found in better supermarkets. Use the pesto the way you would use regular pesto, as a spread, a pasta sauce or a garnish for soup.

1 cup sun-dried tomatoes in julienne strips

1 cup boiling water

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup whole almonds

1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese, preferably Reggiano

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup almond oil, preferably Spectrum brand

1. Put the sun-dried tomatoes in a mixing bowl and cover with boiling water and salt. Allow them to stand for 10 minutes, or until softened. The tomatoes will absorb most of the water.

2. Pile the tomatoes and any water left on them in a food processor with the almonds. Pulse until the tomatoes are finely chopped, almost puréed. Pulse in the grated Parmesan, garlic and pepper, then, with the motor running, stream in the almond oil. Store the spread in a tightly covered jar in the refrigerator.

© Greg Atkinson, 2011