Niall's Blog

I think food is one of the most basic things in life. Most people eat around three times a day, every day, for their entire life. How food tastes, and what it does to your body, would seem to me to be absolutely critical. Few people here in the San Francisco tech industry seem to cook for themselves, or pay much attention to the kind of stuff they put into their bodies, which I find quite bizarre. The culture of consuming vast quantities of heavily refined sugars (via sodas, donuts, pastries, icecream and all that junk) along with highly processed carbohydrates (pizza, bread, potato chips, etc) along with plenty of fatty, fried foods, seems completely insane. And then people wonder why they are overweight, and suffer from all manner of health problems - diabetes, heart disease, and of course deadly cancers. While I don't advocate going crazy and completely cutting out entire food groups willy nilly - probably such an effort will be unsuccessful in the long run, and almost certainly decrease your overall happiness and emotional well being - I do think its important for people to reclaim their connection to food and at least choose their own ingredients, cooking methods, and generally go through life being aware of the details of food. If ever details are important, its the details pertaining to food. Anyway, on to this week's recipe. Andronico's had organic New York Steak on special, so I bought a nice cut and cooked it. Allspice Steak with Broccoli and Shitake Mushrooms

• One USDA organic New York Steak
• 1/2 tsp. Jamaican Allspice
• One crown of broccoli
• 1/3 lb fresh Shitake mushrooms
• 1 tsp salt

Preparation: A friend of mine, Chris, who is a fantastic cook (and chefs professionally) once told me the secret to good tasting steak is salt. While my steak isn't as good as his, he's certainly right about the salt. Rub both sides of the steak with plenty of salt, and then rub in the allspice. I cooked mine on a George Foreman, but you can easily do its under your own non-contact grill or even use a pan. I like my steaks to be done medium, so I cooked it for around 6-7 minutes. In the meantime, I finely chopped the shitake mushrooms and coarsely broke up the brocolli crown (I like brocolli coarse). Shitake mushrooms are well-known for not only their anti-cancer properties, but a whole myriad of health benefits such as anti-viral effects, thrombosis reduction, and so on. Brocolli, like all cruciferous vegetables, have tons of health-promoting qualities. Both of these foods taste great, too. So, dump your veggies in a pan with some water and sautee until they're done to your liking. I like mine on the less-cooked side. Serve and enjoy!

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.

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