Water – the Vital Ingredient…

If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

When I made my first tentative list of posts for this year’s A2Z, I put down watermelon, wine and watercress and whilst I could have covered watercress (so-called because it is grown in gin-clear streams of water) since it makes an excellent soup, I wasn’t really inspired- something niggled at my brain – and then it came to me – Water – how could we cook without it? Aside from the fact that it is a constituent of many foods and of course drinks, it is also used as a solvent to dissolve other ingredients, to extract flavours, and it’s physical properties are vital to the cooking process. Water has three states – solid, liquid and gas, and all of these can be used in cooking, after slowly raising the temperature of greens in water to near boiling, the sudden cooling with ice cubes (blanching), preserves and enhances the greenness (and nutritional qualities) of the vegetables. Boiling foods in water is one of the commonest forms of cooking and, given that ability to dissolve and extract taste, steaming vegetables is even better if you want them really tasty. Water, or rather it’s removal, is involved in preserving many foods, from pulses to the powdered, dehydrated ingredients of packet soups – and to reconstitute? Just add back the water!

The name of Whisky is derived from the Celtic word isca, meaning “water” and some people call it “the water of life” and to make Scottish whisky, you must have a source of richly stained peaty water which contributes both to the taste and colour of the whisky. In fact, most liquids we know in the kitchen will have some water in them – even whisky, since we don’t drink 100% proof, nor is vinegar 100% acetic acid. One of the common instructions in recipes is to reduce a stock (made from simmering meat or vegetables in water) in order to lose some of the water and concentrate the flavour.

Water is vital to growing food, meat or vegetable, and with climate change producing either too much or too little water, flood or drought, often, but not exclusively, in the poorer parts of the world, then water is a major geopolitical issue. The photograph at the top is from a site which can keep you informed about such issues…

The water we drink and use to cook with, varies in taste and purity, depending on it’s source and in simple terms, this is likely to be tap water (with various additives to keep it clean), and bottled water – still or sparkling – also with a variety of different minerals, depending on it’s source. This is particularly the case with sparkling water where the dissolved carbon dioxide that makes it bubbly, may come from a naturally carbonated source or may have been added at the bottling plant. Vichy and San Pellegrino are well-known examples and as well as the bubbles, they have distinct flavours due to their mineral ingredients.

Adding sparkling water to batters such as Tempura batter produces a lighter, fluffier batter…

Tempura Batter
85g of plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
200ml of sparkling water, chilled
1. Add the dry ingredients to a mixing bowl
2. Gently whisk/fold in the sparkling water – over whisking will cause gluten to form and the bubbles to be lost making the batter heavy
3. don’t leave the batter standing. Coat the things you are going to fry with flour before dipping them.
4. Quickly fry in hot oil till golden brown!

Water is the thing that makes our planet so unique and hospitable to life, it makes up a large proportion of our bodies and the more we investigate it, the stranger it becomes -as always, the Wikipedia elves have lots of info…