There is a saying that one should not ‘spoil the ship for a hap’orth of tar’. This means that it is possible to spoil something by cutting corners financially – in the case of the saying; a ship, which needs more tar than it is given.

This axiom is also applicable to food. By this, I mean the type of ingredients one might choose to use in the preparation of a particular recipe, rather than any shortcuts with elements of the method.

A friend of mine used to run a catering company. We were both interested in food and she once told me of a conversation she’d had with a third party, in which that person had suggested how she intended to prepare a trifle, which is a popular dessert in Britain, especially on special occasions.  Frankly, its magic is lost on me; the whole thing seems rather like nursery food, and in any case, looks a mess once a few portions have been served from it. However, I feel that this allows me to be a bit more objective about it, as I don’t have a personal axe to grind, as it were.

The starting point was chocolate Swiss roll with a green mint filling. This was to be covered with lime ‘Angel Delight’ (a convenience product) and topped with ‘Dream Topping’ (another convenience product). The decoration was to be ‘hundreds and thousands’ but when these are added too far in advance, the colour bleeds out from them, rendering the appearance rather unattractive. To the genuine trifle connoisseur, this concoction would be an abomination and a completely unacceptable corruption of the original dish. As I understand it, for example, a ‘proper trifle’ contains sponges soaked in sherry (or other fortified wine), fruit (or jam), custard (preferably home-made) and a topping of whipped cream – with maybe a few flaked almonds. 

It would be true to say that this trifle variant would be considerably cheaper to make than its pedigree counterpart and this is what often causes the problems with preparing food; namely the substitution of cheaper and inferior ingredients.

For example in a cookery demonstration I saw some years ago, the speaker was preparing a chocolate sponge cake and advised the audience to use drinking chocolate powder. This would, in my opinion, produce a vastly inferior result, because this product contains a proportion of powdered milk and sugar. The finished cake would taste overly sweet and not strongly enough of chocolate. Cookery writers would either recommend using cocoa powder (which contains neither milk powder nor sugar) or possibly melted chocolate containing a high percentage of cocoa solids, in order to maximise the chocolate flavour, bearing in mind that other components of the cake mixture (flour, sugar, fat and eggs)  will dilute any flavour added. Continuing on the topic of cakes, I would always use butter in their preparation, and unsalted butter at that, because the flavour is much superior. This is particularly true for shortbread, which just doesn’t taste right if fats other than butter are used in its preparation. I am also against using margarine for different reasons; a topic I deal with in another blog on this site.

Something I had never heard of previously was also pointed out recently by a friend, namely the substitution of lemon curd for the home-made lemon filling in a lemon meringue pie. When we discussed this, I commented that the cookery writer Delia Smith even recommended making your own lemon curd to fill a lemon sponge cake as (and I quote) “most commercial lemon curds are unspeakable”.

Appearance is not always a failsafe guide to the palatability of the finished dish either; the photo at the start of this post shows a chocolate cake I prepared earlier this year, in which the problem was not that I hadn’t used cocoa; rather that I had mistakenly added a large amount of bicarbonate of soda instead of baking powder, rendering the cake effectively inedible. My husband and I managed one piece each before consigning the remainder to the food bin.

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This is not, as it might suggest, a discussion about the merits of home cooking against those of take-away (or other ready) meals. Rather, it is the result of some pondering earlier today, whilst watching a food programme.  The presenter, Jamie Oliver, commented that a long list of ingredients was one of the factors that might put people off choosing to cook a particular recipe[1].

I own a large number of cookery books and probably, like many people, have not cooked every single recipe from any of them. In fact, the first thing  I used to do when I acquired a cookery book was to look through it and make a quick assessment of whether I thought the recipe was worth trying (usually the acquisition of the book meant that I had seen at least one of the recipes it contained prepared and chose it on that basis).

I can be indecisive in some areas of life, but not in this one; my decisions are made rapidly and without any perceptible difficulty.

So, what makes me decide to cook, or not to cook, a particular recipe.

The first factor is the combination of flavours which I perceive the ingredients will produce. I think I have some sort of mental ‘flavour synthesiser’, which enables me to work out how a certain dish will taste. This is clearly a personal thing, as everyone’s taste perception is different and as they say (albeit in a different context) ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’. Of course, it may be possible to substitute a disliked ingredient with one you find more palatable and I have done this before.

Mr. Oliver’s comments about long lists of ingredients are also pertinent to me; I find recipes containing numerous ingredients a deterrent, partly because it’s likely I may not have one or more of them,  and partly because I am more likely to forget an item if it is part of a very long list.

Still on the subject of ingredients, cookery writers are not always cognisant of the fact that most of us need to work to a budget and the use of expensive cuts of meat or niche varieties of fruit or vegetables can put some potentially good dishes out of the reach of the ordinary cook.

The final point about ingredients is concerned with their nutritional value. When many of us are concerned with healthy eating, the total energy content of the suggested portion of a dish renders it either completely unsuitable or only appropriate for high days and holidays.

The number of processes involved in the preparation of a recipe, or the total time likely to be taken can also be a disincentive; even though I am now largely retired from paid work, it does not mean that I want to spend endless hours in the kitchen. Again, I have been known to tackle a recipe in a completely different way (or order) to that suggested in order to cut down on the time involved or to carry out the preparation in what I consider to be a more efficient way.

Sometimes a recipe may contain techniques with which I am unfamiliar (or not confident) and that can certainly put me off trying it.

Lastly, the cost of ingredients is not the only expense to be involved in home cooking. The food is generally cooked and at times, the use of the oven for hours on end (possibly at a very low temperature) is neither economical nor practicable for those of limited means or living a busy life. In addition, a gas oven (such as the one we currently own) can’t be programmed in the way that is possible for its electric equivalent.

24/10/19

[1] The programme in question contained recipes with only five ingredients, plus additional items from the store cupboard.

Photos are courtesy of Pixabay: Free Photos (Heading) and Marina Pershina (Spices).

Sugar has come to be seen by many as public enemy number one in the food world.

But is this reputation deserved?

Sugar is a natural substance which can be extracted from sugar cane and sugar beet. Many of us still use it to sweeten tea and coffee as well as adding it to cakes, biscuits and puddings in our home cooking.

It is a carbohydrate and provides us with a source of energy in our diets (as with all carbohydrates, 1 gram of sugar provides 3.75 calories – this gives a value of 22.5 calories to 1 teaspoon, which contains 6 grams). As with all the dietary sources of energy, if we consume more than we expend in daily activity and the bodily processes that sustain life, then we gain weight.

The body also converts the complex carbohydrates from starches in bread, pasta and potatoes (etc.) to sugars during the process of digestion.

Many foods naturally contain sugar. Most obviously fruit, but also vegetables (in the latter case, this becomes more evident when they are cooked for any length of time, as anyone who has prepared onions by sautéing them slowly, or roasted vegetables in the oven will attest to).

It is also true that a large number of prepared foods contain sugar; many of them somewhat surprising. For example, tomato sauce and low-fat yoghurts are two products that, on the surface, would not be prime candidates for considering as high in sugar.

In any case, what do we mean by ‘high in sugar’? The experts cannot seem to agree on this; a short search online revealed that a sugar content of <5g per 100g of product is considered low, but the threshold for the designation of ‘high’ is variously either >15g or >22g. There is a significant difference between these latter two figures – one being around 50% higher than the other.

Why is sugar added to foods that are ostensibly savoury?

For example, many TV chefs recommend adding sugar to tomato sauces ‘to make them less acidic’. I find that this problem is all but eliminated if the sauce is simply cooked for longer, as the natural sweetness is able to emerge.

It seems to me that in the quest to make food palatable, we are at risk of making it all taste the same. (This reminds me of the prediction that at some point in the future, there will be no hot or cold; everything will be at the same temperature. Without the existence of temperature gradients, life as we know it would cease to be tenable).

Lower calorie products, sold to us on the premise that they contain less fat, often contain relatively high levels of sugar. The argument from the manufacturers is that when they reduce the amount of fat, they have to increase the levels of sugar in order to maintain the flavour of the food. It has also been established that people, seeing the label ‘low calorie’, are then likely to consume more of the product (over estimating, in their minds, the extent of the calorie reduction and probably consuming a greater number of calories overall). There is also an argument that because fats produce a feeling of satiety more quickly, eating food that is higher in fat might, paradoxically, make us consume a lesser quantity, hence the current recommendations in some quarters to eat full-fat yoghurts.

One way in which the manufacturers try to get around this problem is to use artificial sweeteners. These are not the panacea they promise to be either, for example, aspartame (a widely used product) has concerns regularly expressed about its use, because of the possible side effects. There is now a range of sweeteners that mimic natural products and in some cases are derived from them (for example, stevia). Some sugar substitutes can also have unfortunate effects on the digestive system if used in large amounts, and have to have warnings displayed on the containers to this effect.

For a long time, medical advice was biased in favour of reducing fats in the diet in order to lose (or maintain) weight. Some of this is based on research that goes back over 50 years and, as it turns out, was sponsored by the sugar industry (for Harvard University).

Meanwhile, the amount of sugar consumed by those eating a western diet has increased and, with the reduction of manual work (as manufacturing industries were either computerised, or superseded by cheaper competitors in the far East), the increase in car ownership (and use) and the higher levels of heating that many of us now enjoy in the winter (no more bedroom windows frozen on the inside, which was a regular occurrence in many households when I was a child in the 1960s) our weight has tended to increase, levels of obesity are at an all-time high and there are serious problems with Type 2 Diabetes (which is considered to have a direct relationship with being overweight or obese).

Other factors that might also have contributed to this problem are that food is now much more readily available round the clock; with shops open for longer hours, on Sundays since 1994 (UK) and the profusion of takeaway food outlets.

When people don’t cook from scratch and rely on ready meals or takeaway food options, they are almost inevitably going to consume higher levels of sugar, for the reasons mentioned earlier in this article.

During the 1970s there was a sugar shortage in Britain and I took the opportunity to stop adding it to tea and coffee. This by no means implies that I have overcome my liking for sugar, as I enjoy sweet treats as much as the next person.

Participation in a recent weight loss programme (with a degree of success) has made me look more closely at my sugar consumption and I have noticed that, for me at least, some products are now unpalatably sweet. This is helping me to limit the amount I eat, especially in processed foods (where the sugar content is listed as a component of the carbohydrate)

Recent research* (September 2019) seems to suggest a higher mortality rate for those consuming drinks containing artificial sweeteners than for those containing sugar. My objection to these is slightly different – as they generally seem to have a strange (and not altogether pleasant) aftertaste.

[Image from Pixabay]

*A global study carried out by WHO (the World Health Organisation) involving more than 450,000 adults in 10 countries, including the UK, found that death rates for those consuming at least two diet drinks per day were 26% higher than among those who had less than one per month (although daily consumption of all soft drinks, including those containing sugar, was linked with a higher chance of dying young).

The group consuming the diet drinks also had a 52% higher risk of being killed by cardiovascular disease.

This study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine

From time to time, I will be publishing ideas which have helped me with the cooking process and I hope, in turn, will help others.

Unless otherwise indicated, these ideas are not original, by which I mean that I didn’t think of them first.

The first one is about cooking onions. These can take a notoriously long time to soften, and are very unpalatable when undercooked.

If you chop them up, add a little water, cover and cook them in the microwave first, before adding to the dish in the usual way, the time taken is much reduced.

I find that about 1.5 – 2 minutes is enough for one onion in a relatively high powered model (over 800 watts).

Also on the subject of onions (but this paticularly applies to shallots) it is much easier to remove the outer skins if they are placed in hot water for a few minutes beforehand. This also applies to cloves of garlic.

On a similar note, I have borrowed an idea from Jamie Oliver about pre-cooking aubergines, which can be tough when cooked, or absorb unhealthy amounts of oil when fried.

Cut the auberignes small enough to fit into a large saucepan. Cover with water, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove using a slotted spoon, chop and add to the dish you are preparing in the usual way.

Please feel free to share your own ideas in the feedback.

This week I had my second attempt at preparing beetroot hummus. The recipe had very few ingredients (beetroot, chick peas, garlic, lemon zest and lemon juice); however, beetroot is notorious for the length of time it takes to cook, so I was on the lookout for short cuts.

On the first occasion, I cooked the beetroot in the microwave, whilst on the second, I used my hot-air fryer. In respect of this part, the microwave was better, as it was quicker and retained more of the moisture in the beetroot.

Regarding the mixing of the ingredients to the required consistency, I used a stick blender the first time. The beetroot got stuck in it and the process took a while, as well as leaving me with a sore wrist the following day.

On the second occasion, I used my food processor – this was undoubtedly quicker,  but left me with a significant amount of washing up at the end.