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…
Giant Lemon from Crete
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:-
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…
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…
Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash
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…
https://www.acouplecooks.com/kombucha/
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!
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…
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.
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…
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 polysaccharideacidic 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.
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…
Photo by Johen Redman on Unsplash
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.
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!
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!
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!
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
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?
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…
Bramley
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.
Discovery Apple
Egremont Russet
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’.
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.
DISCOVERY APPLE
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…
