Waste - Tristram Stuart

The world has a 'food problem' - rapidly rising prices, shortages, 100 million people starving, environmental depredation - or it thinks it does. This book shows that farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard between 30 and 50 per cent of their fresh produce - enough to feed the starving in the world six times over. Additionally, while affluent nations throw away food through neglect, up to 40 per cent of some crops in the developing world are wasted because farmers lack the basic infrastructure to process and store them before they rot.
Waste is both a personal journey over the world's food waste mountain and an objective investigation of this environmental and social problem. During his travels from Yorkshire to western China, Pakistan to Japan, Tristram Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring and innovative solutions. Terrible though it may seem, the global food waste problem is also a great opportunity - tackling it is easy. Unlike giving up air travel for the sake of the planet, avoiding food waste can be achieved without much sacrifice. Waste is essential reading for anyone who seeks to remedy the current global food crisis and how we live now.

Spring Watch 2011

Here is a quick update on the spring onion roots I planted a couple of weeks ago.

After using the onions in salads and sprinkled over stir-fries the root ends were planted in a flowerpot on the kitchen window.

Making sure that they were kept moist, within a few days green shoots started to appear.

Hopefully they will be ready to harvest again in a couple of weeks. Free food!

Watch out for the next Spring Watch Update.



BBQ Tips - Leftover Alcohol



In the unlikely event of leftover alcohol (that doesn’t have cigarette butts floating in it) it pays to have a contingency plan up your sleeve.

If wine is still fresh then you have a number of options:

Marinades

Wine can be used to both flavour and tenderise meat. Simply add crushed garlic, olive oil, ground pepper and herbs to red wine for a delicious marinade for red meat. Do not add salt before cooking as this can dry and toughen it.

White wine, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and oregano works well with chicken or pork.

Gravy/Sauces

Use the wine to deglaze the cooking pan, boil off the alcohol and use as the basis for your gravy or sauce.

Salad Dressing

Boil the wine and reduce to about 1/3 the original volume, cool and use to flavour a traditional vinaigrette.

Cider and Mustard Sauce

You will use this time and again. Add some English Mustard and reduce the cider in a pan to about 1/3. Stir in some double cream, warm and serve. Simple but very good.

Beer Batter

Use as part of the liquid in a classic coating batter recipe.

Beer Butt Chicken – Fire Up the Braii Once More

Sit a whole chicken over a half can of beer and BBQ in a kettle style BBQ, It is the stuff of legend.

Enjjoy the weather thsi weekend. Uses for left over BBQ food will follow shortly.



Haggis - Not Scottish Shock

Haggis, the Scottish ‘Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race,’ is a classic example of the need to utilize ingredients that has become a legend in its own right. It is made from a sheep’s pluck (the heart, liver and lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, fat and spices, then boiled using the stomach as a container. This came about from the necessity of cooking the innards quickly after slaughter as these would soon go rotten. It also predates the use of cooking utensils.

Although traditionally of Scottish origin there are references to similar dishes in both Norse and Roman folklore. In fact in Homers Odyssey, Odysseus is compared to "a man before a great blazing fire turning swiftly this way and that a stomach full of fat and blood, very eager to have it roasted quickly".

The “hag” in haggis is probably derived from either the Old Norse “hoggva” or Old Icelandic “haggw,” both of which mean “to hew,” referring to the chopped up contents.

Haggis and Scotland are now synonymous and a Burns Night Supper would be unthinkable without one. All thanks to a certain Robert Burns who claimed this ancient foreign dish for his homeland.

Today, canned haggis is available, which is apparently best served deep-fried.

Leaving aside these fanciful tales, here is the REAL Haggis story.

Kitchen Tips - Dry, lumpy or stuck?

Another in an occasional series. Dry marshmallows, lumpy sauces, greasy gravy? Fear not and read on.

1.    If a loaf of un-sliced bread or baguette has gone a little stale and dry, moisten the crust with a little water and place in a hot oven for 2-3 minutes. Bread going stale is a chemical reaction (retrogradation) that occurs slowly at room temperature. Gentle heating reverses the process. Naturally stale bread still contains virtually the same water content as fresh.

2.    Is your sauce or gravy lumpy? Either smooth out the lumps against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon or pass it through a sieve. The quickest way is to use a hand blender.

3.    If you have a bag of marshmallows that have gone hard place a slice of fresh bread in the bag and leave for two days. The marshmallows will have returned to their original fluffy state.

4.    Always serve hot food on warm plates. Either put them in the oven for a couple of minutes or sprinkle with a few drops of water and put them in the microwave. Hot food tastes best while it is HOT.

5.    You are browning meat (or anything else in oil) and it sticks to the pan when you try to turn it.  Take the pan off the hob and allow it to sit for a minute or two.  The moisture in the food will loosen it from the pan and you can then turn it easily. Unless it is burned to a crisp, this will work every time.

6.    To remove excess fat/grease from soup or gravy, dip a slice of fresh bread gently into the liquid and this will absorb the fat. The bread can then be chopped and fried for croutons.

7.    Should a cake burn a little on the top, or rise unevenly, slice the top off which removes the burnt piece and levels the surface, turn the cake over using the bottom of the cake as the top.  Coat with icing as usual.

8.    To prevent the outside of the yolk of hard boiled eggs turning black plunge the egg into cold water immediately after cooking to cool it down rapidly. The discolouration is a harmless reaction where the yolk overcooks and iron reacts with hydrogen sulphide in the white. Eggs discoloured in this way are still safe to eat.

9.    When re-using cooking oil avoid cross contamination by cutting a ½ inch piece of ginger and frying it in the oil before hand. This removes any lingering odours & flavours. 

10.  To guarantee that dishes like terrines and jellies turn out intact simply line the bowl with cling film before you add the filling. If you are reading this with a stuck terrine in your hands, warm the outside of the container under a hot tap and loosen with a knife around the inside.

Are you 'avin a bubble?

Somebody is 'avin a laugh, surely?

Instead of making the delicious traditional dish of Bubble and Squeek from 'fresh' leftovers we are now able to pay over the odds for a ready meal alternative.

Cooked, chilled, packaged, sent to a distribution centre, picked, palleted, sent to a Supermarket, stored, sent out to the shop floor, carefully rotated to the back of the shelf, eventually bought by you, carried home, left in the fridge, until finally microwaved and served in a soggy heap.

Makes leftovers seem fresh by comparison.

And you've got all the extra packaging to dispose of.

Easter is coming, time to empty the freezer.

Easter can be a nightmare for the cook in the family. There is the pressure to produce a feast, unexpected guests and then a mountain of leftovers.  After the Easter Weekend tons of food worth millions of pounds are thrown away.

Preparation - In the weeks leading up to the big weekend start to run first the freezer and then the fridge down to a bare minimum. When it comes to festive food the one thing you are bound to be short of is storage space

Shop ahead - Don’t leave it until the last minute and miss losing out, but, check those use-by dates.

Examine fruit and vegetables before you buy. The spike in demand means that suppliers have to stock-pile in advance and it might not be as fresh as you would expect.

Some products, such as smoked salmon might have been pre-frozen to match demand so be extra careful to check freezing instructions as pre-frozen food should not be re-frozen later.

Make the most of offers in the run up to Easter and get it in the freezer.

If you plan to buy and then freeze food, buy it ready frozen, the supplier will have done a better job than you will.

Have a Happy Easter

 – Avoid the full fridge, full freezer, full stomach, full bin syndrome.