Food - How would you know...

Mangos, Miso and Mirowaves…

April 15, 2022April 15, 2022humanist55

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…

Mangos are a delicious fruit with many varieties from many parts of the tropical world – and being from the tropics, they are always available, but they do have some seasonality and nothing creates greater excitement in the shops in Bradford, UK, where I work – than the advent of the Pakistan Mango season… They arrive in the boxes pictured above, and are taken home to be distributed to eager families. Here’s how to eat them. Roll the small, yellow, ripe mangos between your hands until you have squidged all the flesh inside (they are a very soft variety). Bite on end off the mango and then suck out the delicious flesh! Messy but worth it!

Mangos as an ingredient range from Mango Chutney, sweet though to especially sour mangos), Ice cream, Gelato and Kulfi, I put them in crumble, fruit salad and a favourite – Mango Lassi. Simply peel and de-stone mangos – puree them and blend with plain yoghurt or you can use tinned mango puree… In a future post I will deal with Persimmon cake which is made from a fruit puree batter and can also be done using mangos.

I know I promised to get all the weird stuff out of the way under K, but Miso didn’t fit in so hard cheese! Actually, it’s not so weird when you consider how ubiquitous Soy sauce is, and miso can e thought of as a kind of solid paste version of soy sauce. Both are made from soybeans and fermented (see the K post) and come in a variety of flavours – more so in the case of Miso which ranges from so-called White Miso (light brown and almost sweet) to a dark miso which has been aged longer to develop the flavours. Miso is salty but rich in flavour, about the strength of Marmite (yeast extract) and if you are vegetarian, I strongly recommend keeping some in your fridge as a stock source. Vegetarian stock cubes, are for some reason, often more expensive than meat ones?? here is a very simple recipe using Miso:-

Miso Soup
1. Chop an Onion into small pieces and do the same with a carrot.
2. Cover with water and boil/simmer till tender.
3. Pour a little boiling water from the pan into a bowl and mash a spoonful of miso into it.
4. Allow the soup to come off the boil before adding the miso since it is a “live” product
The natural sweetness of the carrots and onions are balanced by the saltiness of the Miso.

Another thing which Miso is handy for, is to bring flavour to Tofu, which is also made from soya beans in the form of soya milk – Tofu is effectively a soya cheese but it doesn’t have a lot of flavour. (We are talking “hard” Tofu rather than soft or Silken). Carefully peel back the container lid to reveal the tofu floating in its own whey. Spread a thin layer of miso on the top surface of the Tofu and cover and replace it in the fridge for a few days. You will find that the miso flavour has permeated down into the Tofu because the Miso is a live product and so interacts with the Tofu in a unique way. Afterwards, you can use the tofu as you would normally.

Microwaves! Spreading radiation in the form of invisible rays! Shock! Horror! Poppycock! Open a conventional oven and you will get a blast of infra-red radiation! Microwaves heat things up in the same way as any other oven except that they work at higher frequency energy waves that penetrate right through the food, cooking the inside and outside simultaneously which makes it much more energy-efficient and faster too. Infra-red ovens can burn the outside whilst leaving the inside cold as anyone who has misjudged cooking a large turkey will know! But with a microwave, because of the laws of physics, this does lead to one problem – the hotter something is, the easier it is to heat it, so if one part of the food starts to heat up ahead of the rest, it might get hotter and hotter and also burn. This is why the food is rotated in a microwave to make sure that there are no extra-hot-spots and why some instructions tell you to pause and stir the food. However, if you are reheating lasagne, say, and this is a very typical use of a microwave, you can’t stir it and hence you may very well get the odd burnt corner.
Although I do use the microwave to reheat food, I like to use it to do real cooking too, for though you will never see one in the Master Chef kitchen, it is an excellent tool for real cooking. Read any recipe that begins with the instruction to “Gently sautee Onions until transparent”. What it won’t tell you is that you will need to stand over the onions for a good fifteen minutes, regularly stirring them else they too will crisp and burn and go bitter. If recipes said this, would you think”Nahhh – too much faff!” Instead, put your copped or sliced onions into a microwaveable container (I use old take-away containers), add a dessert spoon of oil and a couple of tablespoons of water. cook with the lid on until the onions are indeed translucent and then put them in the pan to continue with the recipe. This might take 5 minutes depending on your microwave and it might work better slightly longer at below the maximum setting – try it out with your machine. At least you don’t have to stand there stirring for fifteen minutes and you can get on with other preparations… Furthermore – cooking vegetables like frozen peas, they will be far fresher coming out of the microwave having been steamed with just a drop of water than boiled in a saucepan. And its better for the environment… Lastly, microwaves were made for cooking steamed puddings – supremely – Christmas puddings. My mother made Christmas puddings in the Autumn and after their initial cooking some hours of steaming, she put them in the Pressure Cooker to re-cook on Christmas Day – another 45 minutes at least. With a microwave, you can reheat even a large Christmas Pudding in about 5 minutes. Anything with water in cooks well in a microwave but something rich in fat like Christmas Pudding – the microwave excels! The recipe below could have come under L for Lemons but I saved it for here.

Sussex Pond Pudding
1. Make a suet pastry with self-raising flour and either real or vegetarian suet – more here.
2. Roughly p+roll out the pastry and line a plastic microwave bowl with the- one saved from a bought Christmas Pudding is ideal.
3. Chop a whole lemon into centimetre cubes and add to the lined bowl.
4. Chop a block of butter equal in weight to the lemon into pieces and put on top of the lemon pieces
5. Add an equal weight of dark Muscovado sugar and put on top of the butter – your pastry lining should now be full.
Add a circle of pastry to seal the top of the pudding and cover with microwaveable cling film (unless your Christmas pudding bowl came with a lid)
6. Cook at full power in the microwave for 4 minutes
7. After a minute or two, turn the pudding out upside down onto a deep plate, because when you cut into the pudding, the “pondwater” of melted butter, brown sugar and lemon juice will flood out. Serve with custard or ice cream or just cream. In Victorian times, they left the lemon whole, merely piercing it to let out the juice and discarding it after cooking, but I like to eat the zesty pieces which cuts the sweetness and the unctuous suet pastry…
Enjoy!

Lemons and Land Use…

April 13, 2022April 13, 2022humanist55

In case you are thinking that nobody eats Lemons in their own right, I have a guilty pleasure to confess – when nobody around me is looking I eat the slice of lemon from my, say – Gin and Tonic – and maybe even my partners. Zest, which is the name for the outer layer of citrus fruit and contains the oils, also means enthusiasm for and so, when I owned a Frozen Yoghurt shop – I called it Zest!

To be fair, Lemons are mostly used as an ingredient for other dishes and rather than following the trite maxim “If Life Gives You Lemons – Make Lemonade!” here is a list of the many wonderful things you can make with Lemons. For example, the giant lemon pictured above next to a normal lemon, is cooked by the Greeks, in syrup and served on yoghurt or ice cream. We hid in Crete for six months whilst the pandemic was at its worst and from our apartment balcony, you could reach over the rail and pick lemons from a tree which reminded me of Andrew Marvell’s – The Garden in which he describes the bounty of cultivation thus:-

What wond’rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

Lemon Curd
Lemon Meringue Pie
Lemon Marmalade
Lemony Greek Roast Potatoes
Limoncello
Preserved Lemon Mayonnaise
Lemon Drizzle Cake
Lemon Sorbet
Lemon Posset

I invite you to contribute your own favourites using this yellow skinned, zesty miracle…

Lastly, I want to share some more about the issue of the land it takes to raise meat compared to a vegetarian diet. I take this quote from here.
“A Bangladeshi family living off rice, beans, vegetables and fruit may live on an acre of land or less, while the average American, who consumes around 270 pounds of meat a year, needs 20 times that.

Nearly 30% of the available ice-free surface area of the planet is now used by livestock, or for growing food for those animals. One billion people go hungry every day, but livestock now consumes the majority of the world’s crops. A Cornell University study in 1997 found that around 13m hectares of land in the US were used to grow vegetables, rice, fruit, potatoes and beans, but 302m were used for livestock. The problem is that farm animals are inefficient converters of food to flesh. Broiler chickens are the best, needing around 3.4kg to produce 1kg of flesh, but pigs need 8.4kg for that kilo.

Other academics have calculated that if the grain fed to animals in western countries were consumed directly by people instead of animals, we could feed at least twice as many people – and possibly far more – as we do now.”

There is a lot more in that article… If you have been trying to cut down on the amount of meat you eat in order to save money, or the world, whether as a result of the ideas shared here or because you were already on this track, please share how it is going for you and what you would like to know more about or see discussed…

Kimchi, Kefir, Kombucha and Killing it in the Kitchen…

April 13, 2022April 13, 2022humanist55

If you’re new to vegetarian/vegan food, then you may think “Uh-oh – here comes the weird shit!” But hey! At least it’s all in one post…

Kimchi is nothing more than South-East Asian sauerkraut – still too weird? It’s just pickled cabbage, a bit on the spicy side. It is particularly Korean and is served as a side dish with almost every meal. By pure coincidence, Kefir and Kombucha share the fact that they ate all fermented items. Kimchi is a pickle, but not as we English know it, however, most of the rest of Europe have great traditions of fermented pickles. In England, we pickle onions, beetroot and eggs (as well as shellfish) by simply putting them in vinegar – in the case of pickled onions, we boil pickling spices in the vinegar first to jazz it up! If you think you have never tried fermented pickles, then think Gherkins and if you haven’t tried them then…?

Of the fermented pickles, sauerkraut is the easiest example, and is made by layering very thinly sliced white cabbage in a jar or bowl, with salt. The salt draws liquid out of the cabbage and after a few days, it naturally forms lactic acid and the cabbage softens and pickles – all you have to do is cover it with a cloth and occasionally stir and skim any froth off the top. When it is acid enough for your taste, decant it into smaller, sterilised jars and it will keep in the fridge for up to six months…

How do you use sauerkraut? It’s great with sausages and mustard and can be eaten cold or warmed up, but I like it in a vegetarian context too in place of chutney or added into soups and stews to bring some acidity to the dish. Why would you eat it? Well aside from the taste reasons I’ve just given, all fermented pickles are good for digestion, provide probiotics, vitamins and strengthen your immune system and even help you lose weight! Another health claim for all of today’s K products is that they contain “enzymes”. This is one of those “magic” words that abound in the world of Healthfoods and I am always a little sceptical because whilst it is a known fact that enzymes are important in digestion (they are catalysts that speed up reactions), drilling down to the details of enzymes and their presence and effects, you need a degree in some kind of science plus access to scientific research papers – yet healthfoods tend to make blanket claims for things like enzymes which then get repeated (as I am doing) with what may as well be an invocation of magic. Make up your own mind – certainly, fermented products are rich in enzymes – whatever they do!

Kimchi is just Sauerkraut on steroids, or to be more accurate – its spiced up with chilli and other oriental flavours. So for western tastes, the argument for using it more as an ingredient rather than eating it as a dish on it’s own is strong. You can buy a jar of starter flavourings in some supermarkets or you can look up recipes on the www! Like Patata Fagusta in the last post, kimchi is more of a principle with many variations and every family having it’s own special recipe.

Kefir grains, a symbiotic matrix of bacteria and yeasts

Kefir is a drinkable consistency yoghurt which is easy to make because it makes at room temperature – so no special Yoghurt maker with little heated pots which you use for a month after buying then relegate to a cupboard. Ideally, you acquire some of the Kefir grains shown above, and simply add them to a bowl of milk, cover for twenty-four hours and then strain the grains out to add to the next batch then neck the kefir! Popular throughout Eastern Europe, Kefir has broken through to a wider market in the last couple of years appearing in shops as both plain and flavoured drinks. If you can’t get Kefir grains, try buying kefir from a Polish shop – it will be unpasteurised and added to milk, will produce perfectly good kefir. You can use kefir as you would yoghurt, drink it, add it to salad dressings, curries, puddings…

Kombucha is a similar thing – if you can’t get the culture, then use a bottle of commercially made Kombucha to start you off. Much is made in Kombucha circles, of the layer that forms on the top of the brew such that Kombucha is sometimes referred to as “the Manchurian Mushroom” or as the “scoby”, but I can tell you that this substance is not necessary to making Kombucha. I won’t bore you with the scientific details of the layer (find them here) but the fact that you can start it off from a bottle of commercially made kombucha, and that it will take many batches before the layer starts coming, is proof that what really matters, is the yeasts and bacteria present in the drink. What that layer does, is make the kombucha more acid, and if you leave it longer than a week, then the drink will become too acid, so if you like it mild, you can throw the layer away each time. (Shock horror in the kombucha brewing camp!)

Here’s what happens – you make two and a half litres of black or green tea using eight tea bags and add eight ounces of white sugar and dissolve. When the brew has cooled to room temperature, you add half a litre of your last batch (or a bottle of the commercially made drink), a piece of the top layer, if you have it, cover for a week, pour off two and a half litres to drink, retain half a litre to start the next batch and discard most of the sediment at the bottom. There will be enough yeast and special bacteria floating into the retained starter to do their job, which is:- the yeast ferments the sugar into alcohol, but you never get any detectable alcohol because the bacteria turn it into lactic acid – so what starts off as a too-sweet tea, ends up as a delicious, fruity concoction.

You can ring the changes by using some herbal tea bags (I favour lemon and ginger) or adding a flower head of Elder when in season, but the great thing about kombucha, to return to the theme of ingredients, is that it is a perfectly balanced flavour amplifier. Add a splash of mango juice, say, to a glass of kombucha, and it will taste more like mango than you would have imagined – so a world of non-alcoholic cocktails beckons…

Finally – Killing it in the Kitchen! No! No killing is involved in vegetarian cooking – I am talking about the fact that cooking can be a competitive sport. There are so many cookery competitions on TV and so many chefs who tell you that recipes are easy as they turn out something immaculate in taste and presentation. Cooking is for pleasure – first and foremost and the process must be something you enjoy, love even, if the end result is to be good. You don’t have to kill it in the kitchen, impress your friends with “elevated” dishes – if homely, rustic, down-and-dirty cooking is what you like – go for it!

Jerusalem Artichokes, Juicing and Hide the Vegetables…

April 12, 2022April 12, 2022humanist55

Jerusalem Atrichokes, sunroot, sunchoke, wild sunflower, topinambur, earth apple.

Once again I was casting around for what to bring to you for the letter J – all I had was Jerusalem Artichoke – which is one of my favourite vegetables – especially for including in a brown vegetable soup in which, together with carrots and onions, it brings a sweetness but also a great rich, roundness of earthy flavour, add a drop of sherry and your soup will be positively ambrosial…

Once again also, I am indebted to Wikipedia for a plethora of facts which both surprised and edified me regarding the Jerusalem Artichoke, many of which relate to how it got it’s name since it has no relationship to Jerusalem and neither is it any form of Artichoke. The artichoke bit is easy, the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, who first brought the tubers back to Europe from the New World, opined that they tasted somewhat like artichokes, though others thought the taste more like Chard. The plant does have a familial relationship to Sunflowers – the Italian word for which is Girasole – they are both members of the Helianthus family – and Girasole gradually corrupted to Jerusalem.

What was particularly interesting to learn was that not only can Jerusalem Artichokes be eaten raw (unlike potatoes) but they are particularly useful for diabetics since their starch is in the form of Inulin (not insulin) which is not absorbed by the human gut. On the downside, lower down in the colon, they can make you fart a lot… A small price to pay for this delish vegetable which seems to be having a bit of a moment. My wife loves to watch cookery competition shows and one chef recently prepared Jerusalem Artichokes Five Ways – he knew a good thing when he saw one!

Jerusalem Artichokes can be used to make Ethanol fuel as well as, in Germany, a spirit called Topinambur or Artichoke Brandy. The inulin is also extracted on a commercial scale as a form of dietary fibre in food manufacturing. So there you have it – a vegetable rich in flavour, fibre, vitamins and with a sweet taste that does you no harm – what’s not to like? You can find more recipes here.

Oh! And Jerusalem Artichokes are easy to grow and because they reach seven to nine feet tall, they can be used to create annual mazes…

Back on our quest to increase the intake of vegetarian dishes, or rather find alternatives to increasingly expensive meat dishes (all complaints to the Kremlin please), we come to juicing. Adults may quite enjoy juice and smoothies anyway, but when it comes to children (or adults) who have to be tricked into eating one or more vegetables, the juicing and smoothing are the way to hide the smoking gun. Oh sorry – you don’t need to shoot vegetables, although vegetable preparation is full of distressing terms, such as, “tear out the heart of a lettuce” or “macerate a clove of garlic” there you go – Vicious Vegetarianism….

Those of you with small children may have found the need for this strategy… Properly speaking – a Juicing Machine, finely grates vegetables or fruit and then spins the juice out of it leaving behind quite large quantities of, still nutritious pulp which, if you don’t want to have a guilty conscience, ruin your budget or fill up your bin, you need to find creative uses for – dips, soups and savoury sauce extenders. Blending a smoothie, on the other hand, avoids all these creative soul-searchings by giving you the whole fruit or vegetable blended to down in one! My advice – juicers are more trouble than their cleaning is worth – get a handheld stick-blender or a Nutri-Bullet.

Hominy and other processed grains habituating Healthfood Shops…

April 9, 2022April 9, 2022humanist55

Lew Robertson / Getty Images – https://www.thespruceeats.com/hominy-corn-995715

Every A2Z Challenge has it’s difficult letters and for me, H is one of those! After resorting to searching Google and combing through a list of 52 foods beginning with H, I decided to go with Hominy and some seemingly similar products like cornmeal and Semolina. To connect with the other theme of this blog, these are products you might find in a Healthfood Shop, depending on where you live in the world – so what’s all that about?

To explain what hominy is – I quote from Wikipedia the fount of all knowledge (which I do contribute to each year) “Hominy is made in a process called nixtamalization. To make hominy, field corn (maize) grain is dried, and then treated by soaking and cooking the mature (hard) grain in a dilute solution of lye (potassium hydroxide) […] soaking the corn in lye^[4] kills the seed’s germ, which keeps it from sprouting while in storage. Finally, in addition to providing a source of dietary calcium, the lye or lime reacts with the corn so that the nutrient niacin can be assimilated by the digestive tract.” Plus this jewel of scientific jargon – “Some of the corn oil breaks down into emulsifying agents (monoglycerides and diglycerides), and facilitates bonding the corn proteins to each other. The divalent calcium in lime acts as a cross-linking agent for protein and polysaccharide acidic side chains. Cornmeal from untreated ground corn cannot form a dough with the addition of water, but the chemical changes in masa (aka masa nixtamalera) make dough formation possible, for tortillas and other food.”

So, this Mexican speciality is quite different from Cornmeal – a staple carbohydrate in many countries around the world because of the treatment with Lye that makes it both able to form a dough as well as being more nutritious with the ability to provide Niacin and some extra Calcium. Both products are ground to various sizes of particles, right down to flour, but it’s interesting that only one country has discovered the secret of nixtamalization (how much could you score in Scrabble for that?) and can make true dough-based dishes. This article gives some recipes since I confess to never having tried hominy and only having vaguely heard of Hominy Grits.

On the other hand, I am familiar with Cornmeal – or Polenta and sometimes use it to make a quick pseudo-pizza, because who has time to make a yeasted dough, prove it, spin it round in the air to spin a disk and then top and bake it!

Frewin’s Pseudo Pizza
1. Add cornmeal – anything from fine to coarse, to a saucepan of boiling salted water. I judge the amount by pouring it carefully into the centre to form a cone whose top reaches the surface of the water.
2. stir frequently until the mixture sets like a thick custard and then pour out onto a wooden cutting or breadboard.

If you have any leftovers, then the next day, cut into cubes and shallow fry till heated through and crisp on the bottom…

https://www.browneyedbaker.com/polenta-pizza/

I turn to Semolina because it is also a versatile grainy looking substance which I for one, often think of in the same usage category as cornmeal but which in fact, is made from our old friend wheat. Most semolina is made from hard Durum wheat – the same one that is used to make pasta but if made from softer wheat it is known as Farina and softer and stickier. When I was growing up, Semolina Pudding was a frequent dish but has been crowded out by the plethora of more elaborate confections on offer today. What is interesting to compare with hominy, is how a similar problem is solved by a more physical process. All grains have a husk or bran outer layer. Inside wheat are two halves of the part which is ground into flour, the endosperm or middings, and between these, nestles the wheatgerm, a tiny plant in the making, ready to be activated by moisture. If you stonegrind wheat, this little plant gets mashed up in the flour and will cause the flour to spoil fairly quickly (so don’t let stoneground flour linger in your cupboards) and the same is true of corn. Hominy solves this problem by chemically treating the kernels of corn which kills the little plant and softens the husk allowing it to be removed. With wheat, it is nowadays ground in roller mills – heavy metal rollers that are set apart so precisely, that they first crack the husk off, secondly break the two halves of the endosperm apart simultaneously allowing the wheatgerm to fall away, and thirdly, they can produce flour of different quality as they gradually and precisely grind the endosperm ever smaller. Semolina is produced by breaking the endosperm up into pieces rather than flour, once the bran and wheatgerm have been cracked off. Incidentally – they can toast the wheatgerm to kill it, then add it back into the ground bran and flour to produce 100% Wholewheat flour, but unlike stoneground flour, where the carbohydrate is released slowly into your body, such wholewheat flour is basically fast release white flour albeit with added fibre and some vitamins from the wheatgerm. Slow food is better – more of that later…

If you have to choose between Hominy and Cornmeal, then remember that Hominy has a little extra calcium and allows you to digest Niacin, a form of vitamin B – so especially beneficial to vegans, which segues nicely into Healthfood Stores.

Many are confused between Healthfood and Wholefood Stores – they are both about healthy food – right? Well, up to a point, because their philosophy is completely different. Healthfood shops are usually half devoted to supplements – pills in the main, which are to make up for deficiencies in the modern diet. The other half is usually dry goods which are regarded as healthy and perhaps some of the more difficult to source in the supermarkets. These dry goods are also usually available in Wholefood Stores, but often at a much better price and the philosophy is quite opposite – eat whole (unprocessed) foods and you won’t need all the supplements. Well that’s not altogether true – modern science has given us an understanding of conditions that require additional supplements to that found just in the diet – true this may be because food quality is not the best – and here the Wholefood Store tries to provide the best in Organic quality foods, but let’s face it, we cannot all afford the prices of such quality food and supplements may be a cheaper option. Its hard to find an affordable balance between the two philosophies, but understanding the difference between them is a good starting point…

What kind of food do you eat, healthfood, wholefood, convenience, ethnic, affordable? The choices are only going to become more difficult in the next while following the war in Ukraine – source of much wheat, but also other grains like millet and bulgar.

Ginger and Grow Your Own…

April 8, 2022April 8, 2022humanist55

Ginger is, along with garlic, the base ingredient of South asian cooking just as olive oil and tomatoes might be said to be the base of say Mediterranean cuisine. It nearly doesn’t qualify for this year’s theme, but you can eat ginger in it’s own right – albeit candied or crystalised. As an ingredient it comes in many forms fresh (for that savory cooking base), dried and ground (think – sprinkled on melon), pureed for the lazy, and the aforementioned sweet stuff can be used in all sorts of desserts – Rhubarb and Ginger Crumble (or jam). Ginger is so ubiquitously available around the world, that if global supply lines are forced to prioritise, I sincerely hope that Ginger will be a top priority.

The other part of this post is about Growing You Own – be it a garden or an allotment, in the WAR that we all find ourselves in, with food prices rising, we can remember the British World War 2 exhortation to Dig for Victory – or at least, dig to save your bank balance!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwscng8/revision/4

Unfortunately, unless you live in the tropics, you cannot grow ginger outside, all year around but this site tells you how to manage it between indoor and outdoors… Back in 1968 when I was 14, we visited Australia and in the holiday between the two terms we were there, we did a 4000 mile round-trip by car, and we visited what claimed to be the largest ginger plantation in the southern hemisphere at Bundaberg. Decades later, courtesy of globalisation, I can buy Bundaberg Ginger Beer here in England! I once talked to a sales rep. for Stones Ginger Wine about the difficulty of extending this warming drink beyond it’s traditional Christmas slot when it is often consumed in the form of a WhiskyMac. I mentioned the Australian connection but he said that they had to be careful of that because ginger wine is sold in six-packs of “tinnies” in Australia and often represents young Australians first experience of drinking. (Confirmation please from any Australians reading this?) I believe in California, the same slot is filled by Thunderbird Wine (made from pears?).

My partner and I have had an allotment for some three years now and have brought it back from a weed-strewn wasteland to a productive neatness and pride forces me to show it you!

Recipe wise I have one tip today – when making jam with rhubarb – a favourite from our allotment – try and pick early, thin stalks – they are tender and less acid. Now, instead of chopping and boiling the fruit before you add the sugar, as you do for most fruit, chopt the stalks into 1/4 inch lengths, weigh and put into a bowl. Add an equal weight of sugar poured over the fruit but not mixed and cover overnight. the next day you will find the sugar will have pulled a lot of juice out of the fruit, leaving it tougher when you gently bring the jam to the boil – in other words it doesn’t all go to a mush, as rhubarg is prone to. And do try it with ginger added – to your own taste of course…

Fish and Freezers on the road to less meat…

April 7, 2022April 7, 2022humanist55

Eating fish and vegetables only, is known as being Pescatarian and it is a good option if you want, or in these economically distressed times, need to reduce your intake of red and white meat. On environmental and ethical grounds, eating fish is not without its problems – overfishing, the inequity of huge trawlers sucking up the fish on which third world countries depend, and the problems of by-catch – so you need to do due diligence if these things concern you – as they should, just as much as issues around meat production should, or the clearing of land for soya or palm oil. The links are there if you want to look into these issues, and the last one, https://www.wwf.org.uk/10-myths-about-deforestation , illustrates how complicated the global issues around food are – even for vegetarians. however, this post is not about that, it’s about using fish as an ingredient and using freezers as a means of preserving food.

Just as with the post on Chorizo, I like to keep prawns in the freezer as an easy way to add protein and flavour to mainly vegetable dishes, usually stir-fried (which can preserve the goodness and flavour of the vegetables well – more of that in a later post). Also in my freezer, because it is a seasonal vegetable, ideal for the freezing process, are frozen peas. Defrost frozen peas and eat them raw, and you will very nearly capture the straight from the pod sweetness of this lovely little vegetable. When I briefly had a restaurant, my wholesaler stocked large bags of frozen Butter Beans that were a revelation! Previously, since childhood, I was familiar with canned butter beans, which were okay, and then I progressed to soaking and cooking dried butter beans. As one of the largest beans, dried butter beans are difficult to cook without losing the skins and turning to mush – so I can’t stress enough how great butter beans frozen from fresh are. I suppose there are places where butter beans are grown and available fresh, but frozen is the next best thing. Canning is an older process, and once perfected in the 19th century, it revolutionised the storage of food. It is still more energy efficient than freezing, in part because, once frozen, you have to keep the food frozen, and whilst canned food is tasty, freezing probably has the edge on taste. As a child, many was the hour we spent assisting my parents to process trays of peaches brought from the market at peak season and bottled in Kilner Jars – the home equivalent and precursor of canning. Ah! The satisfaction of a larder with shelves packed with those colourful jars and the anticipation of meals to come – but my parents moved with the times, and kilner jars were replaced, for the most part, with a chest freezer.

https://www.sarsons.co.uk/kilner — Kilner Jars

Kilner Jars have made a comeback in recent years, and if energy conservation is your thing, and you have a good size larder, then give them a go as an alternative to the freezer for home preserving and take advantage of seasonal gluts…

Going back to fish as an ingredient, there are a huge range of fish sauces, powdered fish and fish pastes – mainly from South-East Asia – that you can add to dishes to enrich the flavour – and mostly, these ingredients pack a flavour punch that can knock your socks off! But lest you think that those are exclusively Asian, the Romans also made a fish sauce called Garum.

Back in the days of my restaurant, the last dish I prepared before service, was often a fish pie, because much of the cooking was done in a large wok and once topped with mashed potato, it just needed a relatively short time in the oven to brown the potato and for the fish base flavours to mingle.

Frewin’s Fish Pie
1. Obtain a fish pie mix from your fishmonger, it will likely contain cod, smoked haddock, and salmon, or you could purchase these separately and create your own mix.
2. Boil potatoes sufficient to make a topping for the fish pie – unless you are doing fine dining, I like to leave the skins on for the goodness therein. While the potatoes cook – in a large wok or saucepan, fry celery chopped into half-inch pieces – celery is tough and has a lot of water, unlike onions which burn easily, so add the onions second and stir occasionally till the onions are starting to go translucent.
3. Add very thinly sliced carrots or pre-cooked carrots.
4. Add some butter before adding the fish mix. This butter will help the fish not too stick but will also form the basis of the sauce. Cook, stirring well until the fish loses its translucency.
5. Add some wholegrain mustard to taste plus either fresh or dried dill leaf – this is a classic combination of flavours with fish, especially in Scandinavia. You can add frozen peas at this stage too if you want.
6. Add a little plain flour and stir until it soaks up the butter and then quickly add and stir well, a little milk until it combines with the butter/flour to form a roux. Lower the heat right down and stir in cream and season to taste – transfer the mixture to a casserole dish large enough to have room for the mashed potato topping. Carefully add the mashed potato trying to seal the whole surface over the fish base and score with a fork. Dot butter over the scored surface and/or grated cheese if you fancy it more luxurious and bake in a moderately hot oven until the potato topping is nicely brown. You can eat straight away or leave to rest or cool and refrigerate for reheating the next day and of course, you can put some portions in the freezer for another day!

Apologies for the lack of quantities, but this is a dish in which you may vary the ingredients according to taste and what is available – for example, you can make a smaller amount of fish go further by adding mushrooms, you can add a little acid note with chopped gherkins or capers – I never wrote my recipe down before – so take it as guidance only – Bon appetit!

Eggs, Aquafaba and Equipment

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022humanist55

https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/this-is-the-trick-to-making-perfect-sunny-side-up-eggs — This Is the Trick to Making Perfect Sunny-Side-Up Eggs

Eggs certainly qualify for this year’s theme, in addition to the many ways you can eat them in their own right – boiled, fried, poached, and scrambled (did I miss any methods?) – they are a vital ingredient in many other dishes – especially baked goods – cakes and enriched breads like brioche and we have already covered Bread and Butter Pudding! Vital – but not irreplaceable – there is an alternative! Eggs are a substantial source of protein for many Vegetarians, but if you take the next step and go Vegan, then eggs are a no-no. The alternative substance that can substitute, at least for egg-whites, is called Aquafaba, although Aquafava would be a better name since it is bean derived (fava). Aquafaba is the viscous water produced by cooking many kinds of beans but best made by cooking Chickpeas – yes, all that water you tip away if you use tinned chickpeas, can be used to make, say, Meringue! The discovery of this miraculous liquid was as recent as 2014 – a decade that saw a massive rise in sales of Hummus – one of the most famous dishes to be produced from chickpeas – no better time to discover such a valuable byproduct.

https://www.inspiredtaste.net/50401/aquafaba/ — How to Make Aquafaba (Ultimate Guide

This is not an analogue imitation such as I decried in Analogues of Meat because you certainly can’t make a fried egg analogue from Aquafaba, but you can make a substitution of the functional values of egg white as an ingredient, plus you are adding protein that would otherwise be wasted – and if you are Vegan, every bit of protein counts…

In the week of writing this post (one week before A2Z launches!) – there was an episode of the BBC Food Programme on the subject of Beans which is well worth listening to if you are allowed to by the BBC location police…

Short and sweet today! The internet is full of recipes using Aquafaba and I am certainly not going to attempt to insult the intelligence of my esteemed readers by teaching them to cook eggs! I will just say, that if you are lucky enough to have a large garden, you might consider keeping a few chickens and gathering your own eggs…

Equipment for Vegetarian Cooking…

Do you need to re-equip your kitchen with all sorts of new gadgets in order to embrace a reduced meat diet? Short answer – no!
Yes, there are some things that tend to be found more in vegetarian circles, such as bean-sprouters, but even as a carnivore, you may have embraced a sprout salad alongside your steak, and if not, then before you rush out and buy a fancy, purpose-made sprouter, experiment with a large jar on its side – just until you are sure you enjoy the routine of sprouting and of course – the product. Nor do you need to get rid of your barbeque, because vegetables have been finding their way onto BQs in increasing numbers, and even high-end cheffy kitchens often include a BQ to get that caramelisation and smoky infused taste for meat and veg!

Bean Sprouts and a sprouter from https://www.liveeatlearn.com/how-to-sprout-legumes/

Steamers are also associated with vegetables and they are great for doing multiple vegetables, but I find that most useful when cooking the logistical nightmare that is Christmas Dinner (the non-vegetarian kind), whilst most of my vegetarian dishes, the vegetables are all mixed together – think Ratatouille or Stir-fry.
I will be covering several items of cooking equipment – we have already looked at the Dehydrator and old favourites like the Pressure Cooker will feature, as well as bones of contention such as the Microwave. If I get around to my long thought about book “The Gradual Vegetarian” – you can be sure I will only introduce special purchases of equipment well spaced out and only when a workaround cannot be found, but for now, this blog challenge is arranged alphabetically so let the equipment come as it may…

Dates, Dehydrators and the Death of Globalism…

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022humanist55

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 foods which can be eaten on their own but can also become ingredients in other dishes…

Globalisation has been rolled back since the banking crisis of 2008, first by the banking regulation that followed, then by Trumpian and Brexit nationalism and mercantilism, then by Covid and now by the shock of war. – From The Spectator

What does this mean? In short, we have all got used to supply chains that bring things from all over the world in a complicated, interlinked, interdependent, just-in-time web of trade. For most consumers, this is most apparent in food. When I was little, we enjoyed English seasonal apples because the rest of the time, the options were small, but now we eat apples from New Zealand (the antipodes of the UK) and many other countries – evening out the shortages of seasonality. In other areas, a factory in Ukraine, that produces a major share of the world’s Neon requirements, has closed down due to the WAR. You may wonder why I keep using shouty capitals for WAR, well it’s because Putin keeps trying to fool (mostly his own people) by denying the reality of what he is doing and calling it a “Special Military Operation”. The unintended consequence of his ill-thought-out WAR, is an acceleration of the death of globalisation. The Neon factory, exists not for the creation of colourful neon signs (whose days is done, in the age of LEDs) but instead, is used in the production of microchips. There is already a shortage of microchips (used in almost every industrial product these days) due to the disruption of production and supply chains by Covid 19. The fragility of these supply chains was further evidenced by one ship getting stuck and blocking the Suez Canal for a couple of weeks and forcing other ships to take the long way around Africa.

We may hope that countries around the world do not return to mercantilism (the opposite of Globalism) but in the light of the WAR in Ukraine, countries will have to consider more self-reliant trading, less dependence on Russian oil and gas for example, more reliable independent defence strategies and more home-grown food strategies. Today’s Food as an Ingredient is the Date, a fruit that is grown from Spain and North Africa, across to the Far East. Are we to face a shortage of Dates in the future? I hope not, and I can’t see a reason why this particular commodity should be affected by a general retrenchment of globalism – let’s hope not anyway, because dates have an important role as an ingredient in Vegetarian and Vegan cooking – which is one response to the coming crisis in food supply chains.

Dates – as an Ingredient…

Dates – little joyous bundles of nutrition…

It is said of Dates, that if you had to survive on one single foodstuff, you could not do better than Dates. They are 75% carbohydrate and have 2% protein and even 1%fat. They are also tasty – especially when freshly dried, having an unctuous, melt in the mouth softness. My first encounter with dates was good, but not as good as the joy of the whole, fresh fruit. My mother used to buy blocks of chopped compressed dates, which she experimentally, (probably a suggestion from Woman’s Weekly) combined with grated apple as sandwich filling! Best eaten quickly before the apple browned… a better experience were the long boxes of dates with rounded ends that we always had at Christmas, slightly dried but glossily sticky. Today, I live near Bradford, which, having a large Moslem population, can be relied upon to supply dates all year round, but with a huge selection of different varieties at either Ramadan or when the date harvest takes place.

From a vegetarian/environmental point of view – getting your sugars from a natural source, as opposed to eating processed sugars, is a great option – true, both have to be transported from afar, but then there is the environmental cost of processing sugar… So considering dates as an ingredient – they add both sweetness and flavour. For example, I love the combination of rhubarb and dates and might not add any sugar at all providing I add enough dates. In my post on apples, the Fresh Apple Oat Cake was topped with a layer of softened dates and think of classic recipe combinations such as Date and Walnut Cake! Indeed you can happily add chopped dates to any recipe calling for mixed fruit – you can add them to salads and savoury dishes where they add a richer sweetness balance than a pinch of sugar. There are, these days, many refined products made from dates – Date Molasses, Date Sugar, Date Spread and read through the ingredients of many chutneys and sauces and you will find dates. HP Brown Sauce (the original brown sauce) was developed in England to sate the taste of British soldiers, returned from India, who had developed a taste for something rich and spicy and the ingredients include date fo sweetness, and tamarind – almost the opposite of dates, for sourness – another unexpected product of British Imperialism…

Dehydrators

Lastly, I want to turn to an aspect of the post-globalism world that might be coming down the line – preserving food. I will cover several forms of preserving that might help us extend the life of our local food products if globally sourced foods are diminished. We have already touched on jam – a form of preserving, and today I want to touch on Dehydrators. Dried fruit, touted as the responsible parent’s alternative to sweets, is expensive – home dehydrated fruit is cheap! I bought a typical dehydrator with six shelves and can load it simultaneously with a pineapple, apples, kiwi fruit and bananas – roughly a carrier-bag full, and reduce it overnight to a few takeaway tubs full of delicious dried fruit! this is the first and most obvious use of a dehydrator, but you can make your own jerky at the meat eater’s end of the scale, and vegan no-bake bread, at the other end of the spectrum – and guess what? The vegan bread can contain Dates – who would have thought it! My Dehydrator cost me £25.00 and has easily paid for itself providing healthy dried fruit snacks to adult grandchildren as well as ourselves.

Chorizo – as an ingredient – Not Going the Whole Hog…

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022humanist55

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 on their own as well as becoming ingredients in other dishes…

I wrote this post in preparation for April, just about at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the knock-on effects of the WAR, have become more apparent and include the idea that meat production is going to skyrocket. I decided to broaden the scope of my theme to include moving toward more vegetarian or plant-based food in our diet which is not the same thing as full-on espousing Vegetarianism for reasons, Ethical, Environmental, or Health, but rather, an inevitable reaction to meat shortages and rising prices. So, if we must go with the vegetarian favouring times, let us go willingly, or at least without complaint, for there are those without any choice, and let us garner knowledge to make the best of the experience – and what better place to start than using tiny amounts of highly concentrated meat flavour to add to mostly plant based dishes…

This post gets to the heart of using food as an ingredient as opposed to food in it’s own right. I always keep some Chorizo (pronounced Chor – ee -tho ) in my fridge but I almost never eat it by the slice or chunk! I am not vegetarian, but I recognise the need to drastically cut down on the amount of meat produced in the world – for the sake of the environment. Meat has a richness of flavour compared to say, a lentil, especially when, as in the case of Chorizo and similarly cured sausages, it has been concentrated by the process of curing. So a good way of introducing flavour into, mainly vegetable-based dishes, whilst reducing your meat intake (a healthy idea anyway), is to add small quantities of finely chopped Chorizo to your dish. Health-wise, you are also getting some vitamin B which is missing from purely plant-based food.

There is a heath argument against cured meats on account of substances used in the curing process being carcinogenic, but we are talking about small quantities of chorizo and there are so many worse sources of danger all around us, so I am prepared to take the risk for the sake of taste. You can use other types of cured sausage, but I like the fruity, spicy flavour of Chorizo which comes from smoked pimento, and I fry it in with onions at the start of making a dish. It’s a win for flavour, for the environment, and for your personal reduction of meat intake!

Spicy Tomato and Chorizo Pasta Bake from https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/collections/recipes-with-chorizo/

The recipe above is from a site showing 41 recipes that include Chorizo as an ingredient, to a greater or lesser extent and illustrates how to incorporate it…

If you have a favourite cured meat that you use as an ingredient – please share in the comments!