Food - How would you know...

Hominy and other processed grains habituating Healthfood Shops…

April 9, 2022April 9, 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…

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!

Bread – in Geopolitics, in Vegetarianism and – as an ingredient…

April 2, 2022April 2, 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…

As the WAR in Ukraine rages on, Ukraine’s minister of agrarian and food policy, announced that – Ukraine’s government has banned the export of wheat, oats and other staples that are crucial for global food supplies as authorities try to ensure they can feed people during Russia’s intensifying war. New rules on agricultural exports introduced this week also prohibit the export of millet, buckwheat, sugar, live cattle, and meat and other byproducts from cattle (see article). As things are, Ukrainian farmers will be lucky to get out to fertilise the soon to sprout winter wheat – ironically, whilst Ukraine is often referred to as the bread-basket of the world, and the yellow colour on the flag of Ukraine symbolises the wheat, the fertiliser used to grow Ukrainian wheat, comes from Russia, illustrating the perfect storm of food supply chains that Putin has, with lack of, or incorrect, foresight, loosed upon the world. Every World War is different, and make no mistake, we are in a world war, because the countries and peoples affected by the WAR, lie far beyond the extent of the fighting. Economies and supply chains require no declarations of war to involve and decimate. European countries will feel the loss of Ukrainian wheat, but the other grains on that list – buckwheat and millet are vital imports to many developing countries such as in Africa. Russia looks likely to take all of Ukraine’s coast and ports so that even if they stop where they are at that point, and back down, how will exports to those developing countries take place?

We may have no choice but to eat less meat since as we saw in the last post, it takes so much grain to raise beef cattle, and we should face this shift with no complaint since there are many people in the world who will have less choice than we do. We will not be being forced to live solely on the staple dish of bread (or as Marie Antoinette would have it – cake) but undoubtedly some things will change our eating habits, whether we like it or not. The rich will, of course, continue to afford the full menu of choices.

Bread is a Staple Food! Of the ten world staple foods, wheat, the source of most breads, is at number three, after maise and rice, which might come as a surprise to Europeans, whose massive use of bread and whose knowledge of foods foreign is often dismal. Maise, or Corn, is, of course, the source of Cornbread, whilst Rice is the main ingredient in most Gluten-Free flour and the bread made from it. After these three staples, comes Potato which is also used in some bread recipes together with some wheat flour. The rest of the ten staples do not significantly feature in the world of bread – Cassava, Soybeans, Sweet Potatoes, Yams, Sorghum and Plantain. If you know of any breads made from these, please correct me by sharing in the comments!

Before looking at bread as an ingredient, let us take a quick trip around the manna itself. The first thing that comes to mind, is a loaf of bread, and to make this, you need hard wheat, as opposed to the soft wheat used for cake and some softer, cake-like breads such as brioche, of which more later. If you take morning toast and sandwiches, you have the main ingredient of two of the daily meals and think of beans/spaghetti/cheese/eggs on toast and that represents supper for some people, or think pizza, or hummus and pitta bread. Most bread is Leavened (made to rise), with yeast, but Soda Bread (risen with baking soda activated by buttermilk) also has it’s place. Sourdough is very trendy but has a long history and depends on natural yeasts which gradually accumulate and become something unique in each baker’s precious starter… But there are many unleavened breads – a plethora of flatbreads – from all over the world – Middle Eastern pitta bread, to South Asian Chapatis or even Aboriginal Australian Dampers.

Some like hearty wholemeal, seedy granary or dabble with ancient grains but many people, at peril to their health, like the refinement of white bread! During World war Two, The refinement of bread was regarded as wasteful and wholemeal was the order of the day, so once the war was over, white bread boomed – a whole generation put themselves at risk of diverticulitis – the cure? Bran cereal made from the bran taken out of the flour to render it white!

But what of bread as an ingredient?

Bread goes stale with varying degrees of speed – not that it can’t be eaten, but it is hard and dry, however, since it is still nutritionally sound, there are many ways to use up stale bread by turning it into an ingredient – breadcrumbs, bread pudding, bread-and-butter pudding, Apple Charlotte – the latter made with bread crumbs. Rusk goes into sausages and that could be meat or veggie and of course, bread itself is Vegan – seems those one-celled creatures, the yeasts, don’t count… I once, briefly, had a restaurant, and I worked hard at developing a range of sophisticated puddings, however, I made a rod for my own back by including bread-and-butter pudding, because over 50% of customers chose that – of course, it may be that they liked my particular recipe, or maybe they couldn’t be bothered to make it at home, though why ever not, I can’t imagine – preparation time, even for a full family size dish, is 10 minutes at most. My restaurant version, though, is even quicker and I made them to order.

https://www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/individual-bread-and-butter-puddings-20131101-2wow0

Frewin’s Bread and Butter Pudding
Preheat the oven to 170C, 325F or Gas mark 3
Take a ramekin or very small bowl, and grease it with butter
Cut a few slices of Brioch Bread and butter them with softened butter
Cut a slice into pices to fit the base of the ramekin
Sprinkle a teaspoon of the sugar of your choice
Sprinkle half a dozen plump raisins or mixed, dried fruit (must be large, fresh and soft, no small gritty ones)
Repeat till the ramekin is full to the brim (this won’t take much, leave small gaps for the mixture to find its way in)
The mixture for a large pudding is 5 eggs beaten into 1 pint of milk but you will have to scale down for just a couple of ramekins. To make it even richer, substitute a little single cream for part of the milk.
Sprinkle a little sugar over the top of the pudding and make sure no dried fruit is standing proud as it will go bitter if burnt.
You need a pre-heated oven to finish the pudding – but start off in the microwave if you are in a hurry, or bake completely in the oven if you are not. You could assemble your puddings and leave to soak while you have your main course and finish off between courses. One minute or so, in the microwave and a couple of minutes in the oven. Watch as it microwaves and when the surface begins to rise, transfer to the oven. Keep checking and when the pudding has risen (as it will, splendidly) and is browning a little – your pudding is ready!

And now for something completely different!

https://natashaskitchen.com/angelinas-easy-bread-kvas-recipe/

Kvass is a barely alcoholic drink made from stale rye bread from the Eastern European Countries through the Russias. When the USSR broke up, instead of embracing the western passion for Cocoa-Cola, the people of the east, in a patriotic passion, started to drink a lot of Kvass. what did Cocoa-Cola do? They bought Kvass factories on the basis that if you can’t beat them – join them! I can buy kvass from various Polish shops near me, but I was really intrigued by the fact that this drink was made from bread and that you could make it yourself, so I decided to have a go! There are many recipes on the internet and I am still trying them out, some contain beetroot, or fruit, but here is a good one to start with. So Rye bread is an example of a bread not made with wheat and many people are turning to it to avoid some of the side effects of wheat, gluten, bloating etc. – but the main reason to start including it in your diet is just that it is a rich flavour and when toasted, is crisp on the outside and soft in the middle – yummy! And now you know what to do with the leftovers!

So here were some ideas for using bread as an ingredient – care to share your favourites?

Carrie-Anne over at Welcome to My Magick Theatre, is writing about Ukrainian history and culture for this year’s A2Z Challenge and has a list of charities you may wish to donate to for the Ukrainian cause.

Zalka Csenge Virág posted on International Women’s Day, 10 tales about women and war (including a Ukrainian tale) over at The Multicoloured Diary.

Apples – as an ingredient, and Analogues of Meat…

March 31, 2022April 1, 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…

Analogues of Meat – One Route into Vegetarian Eating

A taste comparison at http://www.veggienuggets.co.uk/the-great-big-sausage-taste-test/

The first time I knowingly met vegetarians, was when my family visited my cousin’s family in Walthamstow, London. My Uncle John was brought up vegetarian and now he was doing the same with his family. There were a lot of dishes we were familiar with from my mother’s cooking, Cauliflower Cheese and, Macaroni Cheese, but then there were Vegetarian Sausages. Since this was back in the 60’s, early 70’s, I am not sure what the vegetarian protein was in those days, but they weren’t great, tastewise. They were sausage-shaped though they obviously didn’t have traditional sausage skins (since they are made from sections of intestines ) so they were straight with a synthetic skin, didn’t brown right well, and seemed to have all the rusk but none of the flavour – a fact that lashings of vegetarian gravy (though having more umami than the sausages) – did nothing to improve. This was the Analogue approach to trying to promote the vegetarian lifestyle – make something that imitates a meat product – sad to say – nobody was fooled! The same approach is still being used with vegetarian burgers and even Cauliflower ‘Steak’ and it seems to me, the wrong approach to set new foods up for comparison with the world of meat because for the sceptics, the analogue imitator is bound to fail at least the taste test, if not the texture, nutrition and appearance tests.

Meat has a strong taste – it is further enhanced by caramelising the outside, and mostly, it is easy to cook and pairs well with equally, simply cooked vegetables – ‘meat and two veg.’ So the first analogue to avoid is just that – why not have a Beetroot Pattie with a Ragout of Stir-fried Vegetables? You don’t need potatoes for carbohydrate since there will be carbohydrate in the pattie and perhaps more in the stir-fried vegetables. Now you are eating something completely different. More of stir-frying later in the challenge, but in case that sounds like a hassle, or you think it takes longer, stir-frying is quick, leaves the vegetables more nutritious and tastes good too and it will take you lees time than boiling potatoes! Since that first encounter with veggie sausages, vegetarian analogues have come a long way, recipes from around the world have turned up on our western shelves, Falafel, for example – or the principle of their cooking, flavours and ingredients, have been incorporated into the latest offerings from the veggie section of the supermarket. Flavours are stronger, chilli alone is incorporated in quantities that would have frightened vegetarians in the 60s. If you cook from scratch, ingredients and spices from around the world are available – although these may take a hit from supply chain problems in the Post Pandemic/ Ukraine scenario. The internet is full of people sharing recipes from all over the world. The before and after cooking photos of vegetarian sausages at top, illustrate some of the vast variety available today – and let’s not forget that consumer demands for choice, have driven meat sausages to more and more additions – cheese, apple, herbs, cranberries, curry spices – so is it so great a stretch to drop the meat altogether and try a meat-free, no a plant-based sausage some nights at the very least?

Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@ralphkayden?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Ralph (Ravi) Kayden</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/vegetarian-food?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a> — See anything Bland or Boring here? I thought not!
Photo by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden on Unsplash

If you are already Vegetarian, or even Vegan, then I am preaching to the choir, but I hope you may find some ideas or feel free to contribute via the comments, your own experiences, recipes and ideas…

Apples as an Ingredient…

I used to say that if there were two foods that I could live off solely, they would be Apples, and Bread! Now that I am older and familial diabetes is kicking in, I try to eat less bread and with both apples and bread, I look for quality and variety rather than quantity! Apples are definitely a food that can be eaten fresh but have spawned a plethora of recipes in which they are the principal ingredient, not to mention drinks, cider and calvados spring to mind.

Apples are divided into dessert and cookers but these are not fixed – you can cook with dessert apples and cookers can become eaters. Due to commercial pressures, the number of varieties easily available, have contracted, so that in Britain, most people will only know of one variety of cooking apple – the Bramley, which you can read about here. But when I was a child and we had two magnificent Bramley trees in the garden, leftovers from the orchard that had existed before the street was built, my parents would carefully select Bramleys, pack them into cushioned trays and store in the attic, where, after the occasional inspection to weed out those that had rotted – we were eventually rewarded with a slightly wrinkled but delicious eating apple. The Bramley, when freshly picked, is too tart for most people to eat, hence it’s utility for cooking, whence it keeps a fruity taste; by contrast, most dessert, or eating apples are too mild in flavour, and once cooked, they are often disappointing, taste-wise. This tartness of cooking apples, means they are full of Pectin – the thing that helps a gel form from sugar in fruit when you are jam-making – hence the combination of, say, Blackberry and Apple Jam, since blackberries do not have enough pectin to set on their own. Recipe quantities couldn’t be easier:-

50% Blackberries

50% Bramley apple

A weight of Sugar equal to the combined fruits.

In case you have never made jam before, I wrote my own simple instructions, since there was always at least one unnecessary instruction in all the ones I searched out and it is in my Theme Reveal.

So I am not saying you should never use dessert apples as ingredients because when it comes to cooking especially, rules are meant to be broken and expediency is the mother of invention – so experiment away. So just what are my favourite English apples? I am not being nationalistic here, but the best apple is an apple fresh, in it’s own season and that means, in it’s own country. There are apples that have been bred to travel such as the tough-skinned, American Red Delicious, or even the French Golden Delicious – which was also American in the first place but was brought in to provide a living for French ex-pats who had been forced out of Algeria. This government-backed scheme did great damage to English varieties with its bland, but long keeping qualities. I rest my case! English seasonal apples vary from the champagne-like burst of flavour of Discovery, early in the season, to the aristocratic sounding, seasonally attired Egremont Russet which comes at the autumnal end of the season.

You couldn’t imagine two more different apples – Discovery, so red of skin that it continues into the very flesh, which is soft and juicy and a sensual discovery indeed. The Russet is very firm until the exact point of ripeness when it is perfect for a brief moment – and then it goes wooly! But when it is perfectly ripe, it is redolent of Autumn, mellow and mature…

But back to the apple as an ingredient. I once helped set up a wholefood shop wherein we sold some lovely wholefoody cakes, some of which were made for sale in London’s famous Camden Lock. The bakers who made them, were willing to sell them to us, but not ar sufficient wholesale discount, so my boss asked me to reverse engineer them, so here is my recipe for Fresh Apple Oat Cake.

Fill an 8” cake tin, ¾ full of oat
Tip into a mixing bowl, add a handful of dried fruit, and grate the largest Bramley apple you can fid into the bowl and mix well
Grease the tin and line bottom with baking parchment
Spoon mixture in and bake in a moderate oven till the top begins to brown
Soften chopped Dates in boiling water until mashable, then spread onto the top of the cooled cake – Enjoy!

You can add, spices of your choice, add extra dried fruit and even grated, creamed coconut for a more luxurious version – but this is the basic cake.

There are so many recipes that use apples as an ingredient – Apple Crumble, Apple Charlotte, Apple Chutney, Red Cabbage and Apple baked in Cider – all of these findable on the internet and you can search as well as I, but I will direct you to one more, based on my most treasured cake recipe book Good Housekeeping’s ‘Cakes and Biscuits’, It is an Apple and Crumbly Cheese Cake – the Lancashire or Cheshire style of cheese is sandwiched between cake batter loaded with chopped apple and nuts – delicious…

On Apples, ‘I could have blogged all night’ – apologies to ‘My Fair Lady’.

A to Z Challenge 2022 Theme Reveal…

March 8, 2022April 1, 2022humanist55

For my third year of the A2Z Challenge, I am reverting to one of my passions in life – Food! Two years ago, I only discovered the challenge on April 1st, the day the challenge started, so I had no time to prepare and plunged into the effects of the burgeoning pandemic. Last year, I decided to try and finish a novel and write around its theme – I didn’t finish it within the month but it gave me enough impetus to have finished it since and if any of you readers from last year want to read it – please let me know and I will send you a pdf.

The aspect of food I was going to tackle is ‘Foods that can be used as an Ingredient’ – so for example, Apples can be eaten in their own right as well as being an ingredient in other dishes. Tumeric cannot really be eaten on its own so it doesn’t make the list… There will be recipes of mine, links to other peoples’ recipes and odd food facts.

However, the world finds itself in a crisis due to the war in Ukraine and so I am going to add substantially to this theme – shades of the 2020 challenge when Covid was on the rise… Here are two things to consider -Ukraine is seventh in the league of worldwide wheat producers (but not for the next year). 50% of the Wheat imported into Germany, is fed to Pigs – it takes 7kg of wheat to create 1kg of pork. Imagine the price hikes coming down the line, from the price of wheat ‘feeding’ through to the price of pork (and other meats). What better time to consider choosing to eat more vegetarian meals. Note that I didn’t suggest becoming vegetarian, but at least increasing the amount of meat-free meals. There are other reasons for considering this, principally the Environment – less land use to grow all that food for animal feeds, less farting animals contributing methane to greenhouse gasses (methane is worse than CO2), less expensive, refrigerated transport of meat around the world. More grain for everyone around the world – poor countries in Africa will be hard hit by Ukraine being unable to plant this year, and not just wheat…

I have had in mind, for a long time, writing a book to be called ‘The Gradual Vegetarian…” I imagined a family where the progressive (probably) females in the house desired to go vegetarian for all the good reasons – ethical, environmental, health – and the (probably) males are resistant to the change. So the book would be vegetarian by stealth – gradually introducing recipes that give the lie to the idea that vegetarian food is bland and boring. Also, you don’t want to rush out and buy lots of new equipment and ingredients before you’re sure the change will take, so the idea of a book that gradually introduces vegetarian recipes, equipment, and ingredients, always seemed a good one to me and I am going to inject it into this year’s challenge…

There will be some jam recipes and so as a ‘taster’, I give my generalised method below, little wrinkles may appear with further recipes…

Making jam is simple, you need fruit and sugar in equal parts plus jam jars…

Making jam is simple, you need fruit and sugar in equal parts plus jam jars. Almost all jam jars these days can be recycled because they have a silicone seal inside the lid edge so you don’t need to mess about with acetate covers, rubber bands and waxed disks – unless you want to!

Weigh the fruit so you know how much sugar to add.
Cook the fruit in a large saucepan – some fruit needs chopping into small bits.
When the fruit is mushed down, add the sugar and stir till dissolved and bring to a roiling boil.
Take a spoonful of jam out and put in the fridge till cold, if you can draw your finger through the cooled jam and it wrinkles, you have a set – if not repeat until you do.
Meanwhile boil a kettle, stand the jars and their lids on a newspaper and fill both to the brim with boiling water.
Once you have a set, carefully empty the jars and lids and use a heatproof jug to pour the jam into the jars. Immediately screw the lids on tight. It’s good to have a couple of smaller jars in case there is some left over.
As the jars cool down, you should hear a pop as the vacuum forms and sucks the lids in – then your jam is properly sealed and will keep forever! This whole process can take as little as half an hour…

I am trying to write as many as possible in advance so that I can spend more time reading other bloggers’ posts, connect with old friends and make new ones. I have had to come out of semi-retirement and go back to four days a week as the company I work for (Gelato and Puddings) – is moving to a larger factory so it is all hands on deck! But by April, I hope the worst will be over and I can put the effort in here…

There is a hard-working team behind the scenes of the A to Z Challenge and this year, Jeremy, the graphic designer responsible for all the badges and banners, sadly passed away, so the badge below is to honour him…

Give us our daily bread..

May 1, 2020May 14, 2021humanist55

I managed to get all the way through a month of the A to Z 2020 Challenge without once posting about food and one of my two favourite foods – bread in particular. (The other is Apples!)

Today I am going to redress that with two things, the first reprising a piece I posted on my first blog “Ripple” on Mo’time. This brilliant collection of bloggers were on a small Italian blog run as a testbed for new bloggery for a larger Italian blog. Unfortunately, the company was sold and after a few months, Mo’time was no more and all the posts disappeared, albeit, not before the chance to download them. Firstly I am doing the reprise and then for something new…

When I first started Ripple, we had been living in a cottage on the west coast of Ireland with no felt in the roof so freezing in the winter and no place, not even an airing cupboard, to rise bread. So, with foreboding, I bought a bread machine that would do its own rising. However, whilst it did exactly what it was supposed to do and made nice tasty bread, it didn’t offer the possibility of more creative experiments so I worked out how to do it and the following is a verbatim quote from Ripple which I have come to think of as

How to Break All the Rules with Your Bread Maker!

“1. The first rule I broke was the inclusion of dried milk powder. It didn’t seem logical to put water and milk powder when you could just put milk. So I did, and then, since I make a kind of drinkable yoghurt called kefir (another story but ask away), I used that too and found that it worked even better. After all, Ireland where I was living at the time, has long used buttermilk in its soda bread.
If you mess around with the liquids though, you will have to abandon the total convenience of putting all the ingredients in, setting the timer and walking away. It is vital that the dough be not too dry and not too sloppy and so if you havent measured ingredients precisely as per machine instructions, you need to keep the lid open and maybe make adjustments to the mix during the first five minutes. How will you know what is right? Ultimately, an experienced eye coupled with a gentle finger prod. Before that though, its the same instruction as for hand-making bread – when the dough pulls away from the side and providing it isn’t thudding round like a burnt Christmas pudding, then its probably right.
Now if you want the bread to be freshly baked when you get up in the morning, you can at this point switch the machine off, set the timer and it will wake up and knead the dough again at the appropriate hour and be so much the better for it! More kneading means more bubble trapping gluten develops which means a lighter loaf.

2. Yeasts and sourdoughs.
Bread machine manufacturers advise against using fresh yeast and offer no recipe for sourdough starters. In the former case, it is because the fresh yeast may rise too much, spillover and fall on the heater elements, form big bubbles in the top of the loaf which may collapse and generally not form the perfect loaf which a machine is duty-bound to turn out! Even the salt which all recipes include is not there for seasoning but to keep those puffed up yeasts in order! You can break these rules and use either the hyperactive fresh yeast or the slow off the mark sourdough starter. The latter is after all yeast, just naturally occurring and variable rather than the mono-cultural brewers leftover yeast which may be the source of your fresh stuff.
You just need two different tricks. Horses for courses.

For sourdough, run the cycle twice, stopping the machine as near to the baking time (usually the last 60 minutes) as possible and starting it over again. This way the yeasts get twice the time to grow and develop, feeding on the flour itself as well as any sugar you have added. This is what makes sourdough bread so tasty and factory steamed bread so tasteless (near-instant yeast that puffs up the bread in minutes). I won’t go into making sourdough starters here but ask if you want.

3. Become a Slasher
For fresh yeast bread, it is a case of another intervention that rules out leaving the bread to do overnight, you must slash the bread at pretty much the exact right time. Slashing bread, as well as making it look pretty, does two things, it makes sure there are not lots of big bubbles hiding near the top of your loaf ready to mess up your slices in that annoying way. Slashing at the right time. about 30-20 minutes before the actual baking, pricks the bubbles and lets the loaf rise to fill any collapse occasioned. In the case of a denser bread which might be struggling to rise, such as sourdough or a bread using a less gluten-developing flour like rye, the slashing opens up the crust which may have dried a little forming a restrictive skin, and the bread is free to expand again. With these breads slashing can occur earlier, as long as the last kneading cycle has taken place.

Once I managed a restaurant with a wholefood shop on the side and our baker up the road supplied the bread. Not so knowledgeable in those days I described the kind of brick-like dense loaf which I knew would be expected by wholefooders. He couldn’t quite grasp it and so we arranged to visit The Neals Yard bakery in Covent Garden. So little was my interest in the technicalities I regret I stayed outside, but afterward, I asked him if he understood now, having seen their product. He said he did, and that it was on account of they didn’t use their proving racks properly. They didn’t put water in the tray in the bottom that moistens the warm air in which the loaves in their tins do their final rising. Accordingly, a crust formed and restricted the bread from rising. the baker supplied us with his normal offering – big and squeezable and, made from exactly the same dough but stunted by drier proving, a denser “wholefood” loaf. Each loaf had its adherents and both camps, if let in on the secret (in the event say, that one type had run out), refused to believe that the bread was made from the same batch of dough!

A last word on yeast, I also make a drink of fermented tea called Kombucha and I save the yeast at the bottom to add to my bread simply observing the same precaution as for fresh yeast.

To conclude, you can experiment in many ways not even hinted at in your bread-machines manual providing you are prepared to make the odd intervention during the process, get the initial dough mix just right and get slashing near the end, before the baking starts.

There are those who throw up their hands in horror at the idea of a machine making bread, not at all Zen! But I feel that the machine offers a consistent environment, even in the coldest house, in which the variations you experiment with are more easily judged. So far there is no type of bread I have not been able to produce.”

Ripple – 22nd May 2006

Now if that hasn’t been too much bread and you are not feeling bloated:-

No-Knead Bread

During the Covid 19 Crisis, it has been impossible to buy flour, let alone strong bread flour – I surmise that the Great British Bake Off has made aspirant bakers of us all – or perhaps people thought it would be good to do with the kids…( just picturing kid bombed kitchens…)

Anyway, recently I saw something about No-Knead Bread and was immediately intrigued since the central process of making bread is alternating a number of rising or proving sessions of the dough, with vigorous kneading and this kneading is what develops the gluten. Gluten is the protein part of the flour and the leading gets it to develop and form a stickiness that traps the carbon dioxide which is produced by the yeast (feeding on the sugar) and that is what puffs up the bread. Looking on the internet, I found numerous recipes (and I will let you do the same) but none of them explained how bread could rise without kneading being involved!

I turned to the goto book when a scientific question about food arises – “McGee on Food and Cooking” – it’s the bible!

Mr. McGee didn’t disappoint! It turns out, that if you use a very wet dough – which all the recipes did – then the protein chains which are the gluten, instead of having to be forced together by kneading, join up of their own accord – magic! (Or rather, science!)

So that was the secret of no-knead bread and by all means, give it a go! It comes out of the oven with a very dry crust because it is baked even hotter than normal bread but there is so much moisture within that it softens and gives you a ciabatta like loaf.

Well, I hope I have presented my credentials as a serious foodie and I have made up for the dearth of food during the challenge.

Please comment – especially if you try any of these ideas so I know you have been here…