Tag Archives: Food

Baby taste buds

Until Emily started weaning, I noted food combinations that babies were sold with some mystery. Who thought that salmon, parsnip and courgette were a sensible thing to blend together and feed to someone? But since she’s been eating more I’ve gained a little more insight into the process by which parents come up with food for their little ones.

Absolute, blind luck.

Surely no kind of measured, quantitative testing can make sense for baby foods? The little monkeys seem to have arbitrary and fast-changing standards by which the enjoyment of any given flavour is gauged. Heaven one day can be hell the next.

I suspect that somewhere, there’s a random flavour generator adding odd combinations of protein, carb and veg together in the hope that small people will find those pots of blended mush tasty….

A real barbeque…

Weber family
Weber family, complete with pig

In Denmark, in addition to banning marmite (!!!), they seem to be pretty passionate about barbecuing – at least as far as Amanda’s family is a benchmark.

However, there – as in here – the hugely convenient gas barbeque is looked on as something of a second class citizen. An important part of the BBQ-ing game, to be sure, but definitely not the preference if time and weather allows.

And so when they want to ‘grill’ proper, they get out the charcoal Weber – the kettle BBQ’s so popular there (and here) practically synonymous with excellence in barbecuing. And after three years with a gas Weber, I finally bit the bullet and got a proper kettle one.

It gets trialled soon, weather permitting. My little Weber family is growing.

Innocent smoothie sugar content – not so innocent?

Innocent Smoothie!!Damian was round the other day, and with his tired hat on (as much as his business journalist hat) he was commenting on the sugar content of an Innocent smoothie. He referred to it as a great ‘sugar hit’ — which didn’t feel right to me, not when compared with the sugary soft drinks I’ve made a cursory study of. After all, there’s a heckuva lot of sugar in a can of coke.

So I looked into it.

By my estimations – natural sugars or otherwise – there is the equivalent of a can of coke’s sugar in the same volume of strawberry and banana smoothie – around 8 teaspoons. Of course the smoothie bottle is marginally smaller than a coke can – but it’s still pretty high! Innocent describes this as:

The amount of sugars in a 250ml serving of our smoothies averages at 29g or a third of your daily requirement. Or, put more simply, the same amount of sugars that you’d find in a banana and another portion of fruit (which makes sense, as smoothies are two of your 5-a-day portions).

Which makes it sound much better, but this is one of those things we in the trade call ‘positioning’. Not sure it helps that much here, or if there’s anything they can do about it given that they pulp fruit straight into the bottle (apparently).

So chalk this one up to one of those occasions when Damo is bang on about something, and take a care when next you hit up Innocent for a smoothie. Those things are sugar-tastic, and probably not great for diabetics.

The supermarket lottery of life

OcadoWe’re trying a different online grocery service – Ocado. After years of using Tesco.com and finding that it had by far the best online experience of all the online grocery stores (I’ve tried Sainsbury, Iceland and Ocado in years gone by), a friend who worked for John Lewis’ consistent evangelism and a couple of vouchers, coupled with a persistent desire for us to eat healthy, provided the push we needed to give it a another go. Over the years they have revamped their website and their delivery service is superb – slick and seamless where Tesco’s is clunky and fiddly. One example of this is that they bring the groceries in bags which they collect on their next delivery, ensuring they can walk straight to your kitchen and not faff around with trays or pallets and you’re still empowered to be moderately eco-friendly as far as the bags are concerned. Also one-hour booking slots, etc.

It struck me that online delivery services free you from the supermarket lottery of life. Whilst proximity to good groceries was an important factor in us choosing our home, we weren’t specific about the grocer, and as it happens we’re in a Tesco catchment area – the nearest Waitrose is 15 miles away, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s about twice the distance of the local Tesco. This means you get accustomed to a certain level of mediocrity from your shopping after a while, and you get constrained by the choices Tesco imposes on you. One massive bonus of the village we’re in is we have two local butchers, so at least for meat we have some extra choice… and of course our garden will hopefully soon provide some veg.

That said, the delivery charges on Ocado are steep and we’re not sure yet if we’re going to set up a recurring shop (which gives you free delivery) as there is a certain joy and satisfaction in actually going to a shop and getting inspiration for meals that way. OK, it’s not Rick Stein wandering through the markets of a Mediterranean town, but it’s less sterile than hitting a virtual checkout…

Lactofree yoghurt

Lactofree Fruit YogurtsI wish I was a teenage American girl so I could say “OMG this stuff is the bomb” or even a teenage Welsh girl so I could say “this stuff is lush.*” Because after years of having to eat soy or ‘healthy’ yoghurt to counteract the impact of creaminess on my lactose-intolerant self, the guys at Arla have created a lactose-free yoghurt creation that is absolutely delicious. Highly recommended.

 

* is this how the kids are talking these days? I’m getting old.

Herman the cake

Herman I’ve never been a fan of chain mail… until my wife got this one from a friend in the village.

Using a sourdough starter, a set of instructions guided Amanda through the process of making a very tasty sourdough fruitcake. And given that Herman is based on a ‘live’ mix, it is designed to be expanded and shared. It was, however, as you’ll see from the recipe, a considerable amount of work for Amanda, so she was a little reticent about spreading its offspring…

It however, was delicious, and is a crazy way of spreading baked goodness amongst your friends, if you happen to know some passionate bakers… According to Lucy it’s good with apple and cinammon and a thing to be expected in the Home Counties.

I’m wondering if my baking colleague at caketakesthebiscuit has experienced this one…

British names for American ingredients (and American names for British ingredients) – a 101 guide (basic tutorial)

(Warning: the following video contains some classic Izzard swearing and might therefore be NSFW. It however perfectly sets the scene for this post, so watch it anyway).

I read a lot of American food blogs – as you may have gathered from my Kenji tribute. But one of the things that grates slightly is the fact that we have slightly different vocabularies for a number of common (and some not-so-common) cooking ingredients. I asked my friends on Twitter and Facebook to help me come up with some key points of contention and here’s what everyone came up with…

  • American – British
  • Cilantro – coriander
  • Rutabaga – swede – wtf???
  • ‘erbs – herbs
  • frosting – icing
  • Zucchini – courgette
  • Maize – corn
  • Eggplant – aubergine
  • Soda – soft drinks
  • Tomayto – tomato
  • Chips – crisps
  • Fries – chips
  • Jelly – jam
  • Jello – jelly
  • Baysil – basil
  • Arugala – rocket (seriously wtf?)
  • Scallions – spring onions
  • Baking soda – baking powder

Contentious

  • Noodles – Pasta (I thought they just called it paaaasta)
  • Entree – main course (Isn’t this a French thing?)
  • Corned beef – salt beef (I thought American corned beef was tinned, processed beef hash)

Can anyone clarify?

and also…

  • Budweiser – beer (not sure these are synonymous)
  • Potato – potato
  • American cheese – wtf? (via @qwghlm, I actually think there’s a time and a place for American cheese)

Thanks to friends on Facebook – Farrah, Mary, Kate, Caroline, Lucy, James, Graham and on Twitter – qwghlm, AndreLabadie, jogblog and gateauchateau for the suggestions.

Any more for any more? I think we have the Spanish influence to thank for some of these (cilantro I think is Spanish for coriander, for example) but absolutely no idea where some of the others come from and my curiousity doesn’t extend far enough to investigate.

It’s amazing how much difference a few short centuries can make to linguistic divergence. In another few months, we probably won’t understand anything the Americans say!

In a side note, that’s the single most successful crowdsourcing request I’ve ever made. I guess you have to ask the right questions for your network!

On the greatness of Kenji Alt-Lopez, food blogger supremo

NYC: Meatopia - J. Kenji Lopez-Alt Kenji’s posts on all things food continue to be nothing less than inspired. I still use some of his tips for making the perfect french fries for my roast potatoes (add vinegar to let you par-boil for longer without losing structural integrity), his posts on pizza, burgers and general knife and other skills inform an increasing number of aspects of my cooking. Let this post serve as the beginnings of a tribute.

The posts that inspired this one were two fold; first, Kenji’s efforts at improving the Big Mac – genius! The scientific method here – rather than the letter of the process that our friends Messrs Blumenthal and Myrhvold espouse, provides a wonderful, iterative, Macgyvery feel to the way he reverse engineers a food classic.

Secondly – Pizzagna. So wrong, and yet so right. Almost something that should appear on Epic Meal Time – but because it comes from Kenji I actually kind of want to eat it.

Be assured, however, the majority of his posts are on more everyday helpful things, including avocado knife skills and general basic cooking principles, so he’s a resource for the world, not just fast food aficionados.

Anyway, if you’re interested in food you should follow Kenji’s work across the Serious Eats blogs. Despite the moderately US-centric nature of it, a lot of the content is fascinating and useful wherever you are – and he seems a pretty global-outlook-kind-of-guy, so there’s some International content too.

Coming soon: a dictionary to help interpret American food names for Brits. And vice-versa.

Crowdsourced and 100% delicious.

BBQ tech and recipes – beercan chicken, snørbrød, rotisserie and roasts

snørbrød med rodpolseOne of the many lovely things about visiting Amanda’s family in Denmark is that there are so many ‘grillmasters’ – BBQ wizards who know everything about BBQ’ing and have the technology to prove it.

They use barbecues there in ways we don’t remotely seem to consider here. Amanda’s cousin Thomas was gifted a plug-in rotisserie for his Weber BBQ, to allow him to do juicy, juicy roasts. He also spoke of his Weber beercan chicken device – to achieve the same impact that Christopher Walken does in this video – only using a BBQ.

Jokke and Onkle spoke of the benefits of indirect heat and did a number of full-on roasts – beef and lamb – on the BBQ. On the one night we BBQ-ed for them, Onkel was actually surprised that we wanted to put meat directly onto the grill!

Jokke and Annie’s other mastery came in the form of snørbrød – BBQ’d bread, Viking style. Bread dough is mixed, left to rise, and then pulled around a trimmed down stick. Hold over barbecue and rotate until the bread cooks through – and pull of stick to reveal perfect receptacle for jam, sausage, ketchup – whatever you like! Amazing, and particularly wonderful with the Danish rodpolse – best hot dogs ever.

All yummy.

In a not unrelated conversation with NCT friend Darren, we mused as to whether there might be a market in BBQ flavoured scent. Everyone would assume you had always just been barbecuing and that would give you a rugged, manly aura, I’ve no doubt, in a not unappealing way. Amanda wasn’t that impressed at the idea, though, so I might not be a consumer of it myself…

I sense a long summer of barbecuing ahead!

Tesco Finest Chicken Mulligatawny Soup review

Trying out a new, improved soup review format. Hope you like!

Description: “Chunky and filling, made with lentils and rice, fragrant Indian spices and enriched with coconut.” Pretty bang on, Mr Tesco food copy-writer. Spicier than you’d expect, and chunky like a boss, as you might be able to tell from the picture.

About: Mulligatawny is a colonial soup, derived from a Tamil soup – the word literally translates to “Pepper water”, according to Wikipedia, based on some of the original constituents. Since then, it’s evolved to mean different things to different people – the Americans often make it with cooked apple, for example – but the essence of a curried soup with lentils seems to be at its core.

Health: Not great – 480 calories for the 600g tub, including 24g of fat (9.8g of saturated fat!), but good amounts of protein and fibre.

Taste: Spicy, chunky, chock full of well-cooked lentils, tender, fibrous chicken, and full of flavour. Absolutely delicious – as good as or better than Waitrose’s Keralan Chicken soup.

Full-o-meter: This fills you up. Combination of lots of fibre and protein with the coconut cream in this makes it a substantial soup indeed. But then, for the calories, you’d expect it.

Make it yourself?: Doesn’t look too bad, although I struggled to find a recipe that matched the Tesco pot. This guy’s looks OK, although cut the apples and nutmeg, and this one on the BBC looks OK.

Verdict: 4/5. A whole point knocked off due to healthiness concerns, otherwise it would score full points.