What’s for Dinner?

Super Coarse Ground Beef Hamburg Set Dinner at Matsuya in Tokyo, Japan

The Menu

• Beef Hamburg Steak with Sauteed Onion and Potato in a Specal Sauce
• Shredded Vegetable and Corn Salad
• Miso Soup
• Cooked Rice

The price is 790 yen (Tax included).

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Juicy Lucy

Ingredients

2 cucumbers, cut crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick rounds
Kosher salt
3 cups apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced (about 1 cup)
1 pound ground brisket
8 ounces ground chuck
8 ounces ground short rib
1/2 cup dry-aged fat
4 slices American cheese
freshly ground black pepper
4 brioche buns, lightly toasted
ketchup and mustard, for serving (optional)

Method

1. Put the cucumbers in a glass or ceramic bowl and season generously with salt. Let the cucumbers sit for at least 30 minutes, until the salt draws the moisture from the cukes. Rinse well and transfer the cucumbers to another large glass or ceramic bowl.
2. Meanwhile, in a large nonreactive saucepan, combine the vinegar with the sugar, mustard seeds, and turmeric. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves.
3. Pour 1 cup of the hot pickling liquid over the cucumbers and set aside to steep. Reserve the remaining pickling liquid for another time. It will keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks, stored in a lidded glass container.
4. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and toss to coat with the butter. Cover and slowly cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 5 to 6 minutes. Increase the heat to medium-high and brown the onions, stirring constantly, for 6 to 8 minutes longer. When caramelized, season the onions with salt and set aside.
5. Prepare a charcoal or gas grill for indirect, medium-high heat, or heat a grill pan over high heat.
6. In a large bowl, use your hands to mix together the ground brisket, ground chuck, ground short ribs, and fat until thoroughly incorporated. Shape into eight 1-inch-thick patties.
7. Cut 1 slice of American cheese into 4 squares and stack them on top of each other. Put the cheese stack between 2 patties and press the edges of the patties to seal them; don’t leave any cracks. This is very important because you do not want the cheese to ooze out during cooking. Repeat with the remaining patties and cheese so you have 4 Juicy Lucys.
8. Season the patties on both sides with salt and pepper. Grill the patties over direct heat for 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Move the patties over indirect heat on the grill and cook for 2 to 3 minutes more. If using a grill pan, reduce the heat slightly for the final 2 to 3 minutes of cooking.
9. Serve the patties on brioche buns topped with the onions and pickles. Serve with ketchup and mustard, if desired.

Notes:

• If your butcher does not carry ground short rib meat, make up the difference with equal amounts of chuck and brisket.
• Aged fat is the fat found on aged beef. You may have to special-order it from the butcher. If you can’t find it, use any beef fat. (If you can’t find it or if you just can’t do it, leave it out. I won’t tell … although the burger is best when the fat is included.)

Makes 4 servings.

Source: So Good

In Pictures: Burgers of Restaurants in Selected Countries

Australia

Hong Kong

France

Japan

New Zealand

United States

Preventing, Healing Tooth Decay with a Bioactive Peptide

Cavities, or dental caries, are the most widespread non-communicable disease globally, according to the World Health Organization. Having a cavity drilled and filled at the dentist’s office can be painful, but untreated caries could lead to worse pain, tooth loss, infection, and even illness or death. Now, researchers in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces report a bioactive peptide that coats tooth surfaces, helping prevent new cavities and heal existing ones in lab experiments.

Conventional treatment for dental cavities involves removing decayed tissue and filling the hole with materials, such as amalgam or composite resin. However, this procedure can damage healthy tissue and cause severe discomfort for patients. Hai Ming Wong, Quan Li Li and colleagues wanted to develop a two-pronged strategy to prevent and treat tooth decay: 1) prevent colonization of the tooth surface by the plaque-forming bacteria that cause cavities, and 2) reduce demineralization, or the dissolving of tooth enamel, while increasing remineralization, or repair.

The researchers based their anti-cavity coating on a natural antimicrobial peptide called H5. Produced by human salivary glands, H5 can adsorb onto tooth enamel and destroy a broad range of bacteria and fungi. To promote remineralization, the team added a phosphoserine group to one end of H5, which they thought could help attract more calcium ions to repair the enamel than natural H5. They tested the modified peptide on slices of human molars. Compared with natural H5, the new peptide adsorbed more strongly to the tooth surface, killed more bacteria and inhibited their adhesion, and protected teeth from demineralization. Surprisingly, however, both peptides promoted remineralization to a similar degree. After brushing, people could someday apply the modified peptide to their teeth as a varnish or gel to protect against tooth decay, the researchers say.

Source : American Chemical Society

Climate Change Threatens to Unlock New Microbes and Increase Heat-Related Illness and Death

The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) recently published “Viewpoint” articles by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine professors who warn that global climate change is likely to unlock dangerous new microbes, as well as threaten humans’ ability to regulate body temperature.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professors Rexford Ahima, M.D., Ph.D., and Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D., M.S., along with William Dietz, M.D., Ph.D., director of the George Washington University’s Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness, and Susan Pacheco, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, authored journal articles relevant to their fields that detail how rising temperatures around the world pose dangerous threats to humanity.

Ahima, director of Johns Hopkins’ Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, wrote in the journal that “global warming threatens human thermoregulation and survival.”

Ahima explains that people generate body heat and have the capacity to regulate their temperature within a few degrees. But “as heat waves become more common, more severe, and longer, we expect to see more heat-related illnesses and deaths,” he writes.

Ahima cites a recent study that examined global heat-related mortality, pointing out that tropical and subtropical countries and regions will experience the sharpest surge in illness and death stemming from higher temperatures, while the United States and Europe can also expect increases.

Casadevall’s article explores “the specter of new infectious diseases” as a result of the changing climate.

“Given that microbes can adapt to higher temperatures,” writes the professor of molecular microbiology and immunology, and infectious diseases, at Johns Hopkins’ schools of medicine and public health, “there is concern that global warming will select for microbes with higher heat tolerance that can defeat our endothermy defenses and bring new infectious diseases.”

Endothermy allows humans and other warm-blooded mammals to maintain high temperatures that can protect against infectious diseases by inhibiting many types of microbes.

Casadevall cites a particular climate threat from the fungal kingdom.

“We have proposed that global warming will lead many fungal species to adapt to higher temperatures,” he writes, “and some with pathogenic potential for humans will break through the defensive barrier provided by endothermy.”

As an example, Casadevall points to the rise of Candida auris, a species of fungus identified in 2009 and called a “catastrophic threat” by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017.

“The nearly simultaneous emergence of Candida auris on three continents, an event proposed to result from global warming, has raised the specter that increased warmth by itself will trigger adaptations on certain microbes to make them pathogenic for humans.”

Casadevall says that, while fungi present the most immediate threat, other microbes also adapt to evolving conditions such as temperature. He writes that “the conceptual threat originally identified with fungi, and exemplified by C. auris as the canary in the coal mine, applies across the microbial world.”

Dietz’s article addresses climate change and malnutrition, calling obesity, undernutrition and climate change a “syndemic,” or multiple epidemics that interact and share common underlying social or economic determinants and policy drivers. In her article, Pacheco discusses climate change’s adverse consequences regarding pregnancy and maternal, fetal and child health.

In all four JCI “Viewpoint” articles, long-term strategies are urged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow the trend of rising temperatures.

Source : The Johns Hopkins University

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