Five Things I Hate In Food

Image via WikipediaThe ketchup post a wee while back seems to have caused a few raised eyebrows so here's some more good old food scare type stuff to have you checking labels a tad more carefully next time you're trundling that trolley down the aisles!

This is a quick scan of some of the things I avoid in food, just in case you'd like to do likewise. I understand that I am slightly more than normally obsessive about these things. I use basic, raw ingredients wherever I can and distrust processed foods in general - hence getting into the habit of looking at what's in foods - and why it's there in the first place. I haven't mentioned HFCS as it was extensively covered in the ketchup post a few days ago and also over here. But here are a few areas to watch...



GMOs
98% of American corn is genetically modified to allow it to live despite being saturated with pesticides. High proportions of the American and Canadian soy bean, maize and rapeseed (Canola, by the way, is rapeseed that has been rebranded with a more 'consumer friendly' name - CANadial Oil Low Acid, in this case) crops are genetically modified. Oh, and cottonseed too. Europe used to be a safe haven, but it's patchier than it was. Generally, the UK, Ireland, France and Germany are hardest on GMOs. India has long battled with the issue and a lot of Indian rice is genetically modified. Interestingly, India Gate brand rice is labelled specifically as containing no GMOs.

Generally, if it's American and processed, the food is likely to contain GMOs. So watch out for those flakes of golden, Genetically Engineered corn at breakfast!

Are GMOs bad for you? I prefer not to eat food that has been modified in this way until we truly understand the science and we certainly don't. Also, if it's been altered to accept massive doses of pesticide that's nice - but I haven't. Here, in case you're interested, is one list of 'Frankenfoods' and the Greenpeace guide to avoiding GMOs. I bet you find a few surprises in the Greenpeace document ( I would have linked to Greenpeace's own site, but I can't find the stupid document there - the site's not terribly well done!)

PALM OIL
I've written about this stuff before over here, but it's worth a revisit. Palm oil is insidious stuff that is used as cheap fat. It's really, really bad for you because it's a saturated fat - basically, you'd be as well off eating liquid beef fat as eating palm oil. It's popular with food processors because its nice, cheap fat and also because it's semi-solid at room temperature, behaving much like thick cream. Watch out for it in ice creams (it's cheaper than the stuff that comes out of cows) and in Lay's crisps, which are fried in Palm Oil. Also in cheaper biscuits, bakes and processed foods such as freezer cakes and the like. You'll often find it masquerading as Vegetable Oil (palm and/or other oils) on labels.

Quite apart from its health issues, palm oil is also responsible for some of the most wicked deforestation of important rain forests, particularly in Indonesia.

E110 AND THE LIKE
You'll often find 'E' numbers lurking in the labels of processed foods, frequently as 'permitted colourings E110, E115'. These are European Union classifications for permitted food additives of a wide variety. This one, E110, is 'Sunset Yellow' an artificial colouring derived from petroleum that has been widely linked to allergic reactions and triggering hyperactivity in kids. You can find a full list of E numbers and explanations right here, some of my favourites include the disgusting Brown FK (E154, it's derived from creosote) and E120, cochineal, which is made out of crushed beetles. I kid you not. They look so much nicer as 'E' numbers, don't they? Oh, and by the way, the natural colour of a tinned pea is grey.

SUGAR
It's amazing how much sugar you can cram into processed foods. A can of coke, for instance, packs a heft 39g of sugar. This website, Sugar Stacks is quite fun, it shows a wide range of foods next to stacks of sugarlumps showing quite how much  bulk of sugar we're talking about here. Generally, foods are labelled with ingredients in decreasing order of weight, so where you find a food that's labelled Ingredients: Water, flour, sugar then you can bet we're talking quite a hit of sugar. Kellog's Fruit Loops, for instance, pack a hefty 48% of their total dry weight as sugar. And they're not that atypical, either.

Food manufacturers often play games with labelling that, after a while, you can develop a 'nose' for. Take Nesquik Fat Free Chocolate Milk. Sure, it's fat free. But it's got 54 grammes of sugar in it!

SALT
Well, more sodium than salt. There are about 40 different sodiums in common use in food processing. Salt, good old sodium chloride, is by far the most ubiquitous. We like salty food, it's more flavourful, so frequently processed foods consist of a good dose of sugars, salts and some nice potentiators like MSG (monosodium glutamate to you, mate) that con us into thinking the stuff we're eating isn't really grey gloop that's been derived from belly button fluff in a huge factors but is actually a taste sensation full of the goodness of the sun and rolling fields. Sodium saccharin, a sweetener and sodium benzoate, a preservative, are other commonly used sodium based additives. We should be consuming no more than 6g of salt a day. And yet a cup of V8 juice packs 480 mg alone. And by the way, a tablespoon of soy sauce is about 1.2g of salt - and stock cubes are little more than salt, celery and sundry other gook - they're full of the stuff. Even the good old baked bean packs something like 3g of salt in a 200g can! Basically, anything above 1g of salt per 100g of product is very high in salt - surprises include breakfast cereals and soups in particular.

If that's not all enough for you, you can take a look at what they put in Pringles over here.

Enjoy that next shopping trip! :)

The Problem With Ketchup

Image via Wikipedia
The UAE has been flooded recently with unwelcome little red guests and I'm not talking redback spiders here.

I'm talking Heinz ketchup from Pittsburgh.

I can almost see you doing the Scooby Doo 'HuuuUH'? at this point. Who cares where ketchup comes from, after all?

Well, me for a start. Because the Heinz Ketchup from Pittsburgh packs a whack of a processed food ingredient that really gets my goat - high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS to its friends. In fact, HFCS is the third largest ingredient by weight in the US version of the plate-side treat that we all know and love. It's why the ketchup is pleasingly gloopy, and yet its a highly processed, vile foodstuff that is 98% likely refined from genetically modified corn.

You'd not get away with this in Europe. And the 'standard' ketchup in the Middle East, made by Heinz' Egyptian subsidiary (it used to be a joint venture, but Heinz bought its partner out in 2009) actually uses sugar as a sweetener rather than the more controversial and dishonest HFCS. Why we're suddenly getting our ketchup in the UAE from Pittsburgh rather than Cairo is a mystery to me.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is nasty stuff. I've talked about it before over at the Fake Plastic blog - take a look, it's linked here and not pleasant reading.

So take a look at that ketchup bottle in your fridge. Just so's you know what you're eating. Or giving your kids to eat...

Cooking Rice

I meet so many people who are intimidated by cooking rice and I frequently see bad advice about it with unnecessarily complex procedures. You know, rinse the rice twice in cold water before letting it stand and dancing around the bowl three times naked before draining it and so on and so on – all laced with dire warnings balanced with reassurances that by following the author’s method, you’ll never cry again.

Here’s how I cook rice. It works for me every time and doesn’t involve more steps than a visit to the Priory. It can’t go wrong.

Sling basmati rice in pan, around 60g per person. Boil kettle. As kettle comes to boil, turn on gas under pan so that when you slosh in the boiling water, it froths and bubbles in the pan as it hits the hot metal. There’s no particularly good reason to do this, I just like the drama of it all. Now half-cover the rice and let it boil for 12 minutes. Don’t let it boil over, otherwise you’ll have to clean up the hob.

Test a grain – go on, be a devil – it should just bite a little bit but not have a chalky core. Now drain it in a sieve (pour off any froth first before you drain it) and put the sieve resting in the pan with the lid on it. Do whatever else you need to do, it’ll wait there for you for a good hour or so quite happily. When you’re ready to serve it, refill the kettle and pour the boiling water all over the rice, tapping it a couple of times to help it drain and loosen up. It will do this quite easily.

Serve. No fuss, no messing, no tears, no drama.

Fried Halloumi

Oh, the charm of fresh slabs of creamy, white fried halloumi with those scorched brown lines in it – warm and soft, the slight tang of the raw cheese transformed by its cooking.

Fried halloumi, 'halloum meshwe' in Arabic, is traditionally part of a Levantine mezze. Like much of Levantine cuisine, everyone claims it as their own, but it's thought that halloumi is 'properly' Cypriot. Halloumi dates back to the Byzantine period and that great mix of ideas, thought and culture that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean and traditionally has flecks of mint in it - mint was originally used to store the cheese and keep it fresh.

There’s no great secret to fried halloumi. Slice the cheese, about 1cm thickness or just under (if you slice it too thin, it’ll get messy when you cook it) heat up the grill pan and place the slices on the hot pan. Fry them for a minute or so before turning them over with a spatula, using a swift, confident stroke and uttering a sharp ‘Ha!’ just to let the cheese know who’s boss.

Some people apparently dust the cheese slices with flour. I think this is unnecessary myself.

It’s nice served with drinks as well. It’s also great barbecued and gives everyone something to nibble on while you’re getting all alpha male with the slabs of meat.

Risotto Cakes

So you’ve cooked risotto and there’s some left over - despite you having over-indulged massively, which is how risotto nights always turn out in my experience. Despite my best efforts to be a reasonable consumer of this most unctuous of rice dishes, I always overdo it. But I always fall victim to my own innate greed and make too much. Catch 22 for fatties.

Freeze it. When the time comes, defrost it and make little balls of risotto and then flatten them into patties (I’ve actually used a falafel maker for this, which works quite well but I have to confess it was a meretricious application of Levantine food technology. You can use your hands).

Dip each patty into a mixture of breadcrumbs, mixed herbs and a little salt and pepper. Slip a good spludge of olive oil into a small pan and fry off the patties, taking care not to turn them too early or mess about with them too much as they are sort of friable as well as being fry-able.

I serve them with a delicious Italian sweet chili pickle I picked up at the Organic. You can serve ‘em with any sort of contrasting tomatoey condiment you like. Or maybe a spiced peach salsa. Now there’s an idea…

Warning, this idea doesn't work with HMHB's Creamy Risotto With Prawns. The prawns stick out of the cakes...

Pak Choi

I'm a sucker for pak choi (or bok Soy or whatever else you want to call it). You can sometimes find it lurking in Spinneys' local herbs section, although it's frequently a slightly sad version of what, when it's fresh, is a vibrant green and white, crunchy bunch of leafy wonder.

The Greenhouse Supermarket (of which I have written reams and no, no emolument has been received by the author in consideration) imports pak choi from Thailand twice a week and these days are frequently the signal for a treat - stir-fried pak choi. Achingly fresh, nestled in threes and fours in their sealed plastic wraps, these grand, vibrant kings of Asian greens will be joined in the pan by whatever else my schoolboy with pocket money visits yield - perhaps Thai broccoli, celery leaves or garlic flowers, a handful of zingy, fresh Thai basil and chopped coriander. I chop the pak choi up and throw in some garlic, half a large red onion, thinly sliced and usually have a sauce of wine, soy sauce, perhaps a little fish sauce, sugar and a teaspoon of cornflour. The vegetables are stir fried until they have just started to wilt, then the sauce goes in to thicken and finish.

I'll usually do something Asiatic to chicken breasts to go with this, marinating them in lemon grass, garlic, ginger and chili or something similar, before grilling them and serving them on a plate of steaming green, crispy and fresh-tasting pak choi.

Notes - Marmalades

1, Thick rind marmalade made with bahia oranges

2. Dark thin rind marmalade made with navel oranges

3. Lime marmalade, made with tahiti limes.

I have been experimenting with making marmalades; where I live, marmalade is all imported and ridiculously expensive, if one can find it. Oranges and limes, on the other hand, are dirt cheap, and there are many varieties available, ranging from unbelievably sour to tooth-achingly sweet. Strangely, though, lemons are unheard of here.

Most recipes for marmalade call for removing the pith from the peel, and slicing the zest into very fine strips. The pulp and seeds are also scraped out and placed in a muslin bag to cook with the zest to extract the pectin, without which the marmalade with be too runny..

The marmalades also tend to be very sweet, even when made with Seville oranges. I decided to go a different route, not too sweet, and keep most of the bitter pith. So far it has worked out great. These are made in 90 minutes, with only 20 minutes of actual work involved. I always make these in small batches. The spices added are optional - one can't taste them, but they do add depth of flavor. these are not quite right yet, probably due to variations in the local fruit, but we are getting there.

So here is the developing recipe for a rustic country style maramalade.

4 Oranges or 8 limes

750 ml water

30 ml corn syrup (optional, but it stops crystallisation)

a pinch of salt.

1 stick cinnamon (optional)

4 green cardamom pods (optional)

Sugar to taste.

Cut the ends off the fruit and discard, cut them in half and then into thin (2 mm max) half-moons. discard any seeds Place in a heavy 1.5 l pot and cover with water. Add salt and spices, if using and bring to a simmer, cover and leave for about an hour, stirring occasionally, and making sure the fruit is always submerged. Add water if necessary.

After this time the pulp should have dissolved and you will have a thin jam. the fruit skins should be nearly translucent. If you need to, reduce until the liquid just covers the fruit. Add the corn syrup, add sugar to taste. Simmer 10 minutes longer. Adjust the sugar if necessary. Let it cool, remove the spices if you used them, spoon into containers. Keep it in the fridge.

If you want to make caramelised marmalade, keep on the heat after adding the sugar, until it turns the colour you like. this only works with oranges, taste-wise.

You could try adding shredded ginger if you use limes, but to me pure citrus is best.