TEdGEREE Kedgeree

NAME: _TEdGEREE Kedgeree

A British Colonial thingie, and people are re-inventing the recipe, really, there are so many emasculated homeopathic - thingies - but (Argh I’m becoming a grumpy grumpy GRUMPY old guy) originally it was someone in India thinking "I wish I had some smoked kippers or haddock for breakfas. . ." - . . . - "Boy! Please ask Cook to make something like that for breakfast! But make it a bit local, okay?" 

I'm paraphrasing a bit but this is a pastiche recipe - an Ayurvedic khichari style dish that included spices, fried onions, ginger, and lentils. As a result, if you'd like to also add ginger (I leave it out because no Kedgeree recip[e really ever mentions it) that's probably within the rulez. 

But it peeved me that so few recipes mention the lentils either. So yeah - GetchaKedgereeHere! 

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INGREDIENTS/UTENSILS:

3-4 eggs

1c basmati rice (or golden sella is also nice, or any other Asia/Indian rice, whatever you think they used)

1 - 2 smoked cod fillets (any nice smoked fish actually, haddock often gets a mention) 

1c milk / water 50-50 mix

100g butter

2 onions

1/4c lemon juice max (you can use more - or less - or none - use your taste buds)

Bunch of fresh coriander 

1/4 - 1/2c frozen peas

1/4c red lentils

1tsp salt

3tsp curry powder

(or . . .)

2tsp curry powder, 1/2tsp cumin powder, 1/2tsp coriander powder

1tsp cardamom seeds or 1/2tsp cardamom powder

1/2tsp ginger powder (oh so optional!)

 

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METHOD:

Hardboil the eggs. (Or use yesterday’s hardboiled eggs. Whatever happened to just having a couple of hardboiled eggs? We had pumpernickel with cream chees, chives, beetroot, and sliced hardboild eggs. Delicious and quick. Should be more of it.) Peel the hardboiled eggs. Quarter or six-way wedge them. Set aside.

Cook the rice as you normally would (with the exception of adding the red lentils along with the rice) nice and fluffy and slightly on the firm side rather than tender. (Don’t know how to make failproof rice? DON’T rinse it unless you buy really shyte quality rice. Use 2c water to 1c rice/lentils, DO add half a teaspoon of salt, bring to a boil with the lid on, then simmer and stir occasionally until the water’s evaporated. Keep putting the lid back on between stirs. When it gets to the “water almost entirely gone” stage turn off the heat and set it aside for 10 - 15 minutes. It’ll be lovely.) 

Cut the smoked fish or break it into large chunks. You can skin if you like but the flavour’s in there. Try and get as many small bones out as possible along the way. Set aside.

Peel the onions, cut off both ends, stand upright and slice lengthways into crescent wedges. Put the butter in a large enough frypan  pan and add the onions, place over low-medium heat. (Or a dutch oven or a wok, I have a big stainless steel wok and find it ideal, but you do you.) 

Add the cardamom seeds if you’re using those. (Actually, I put the cardamom seeds in the wok earlier, with a splash of vegetable oil and salt, toast them gently until they start popping, then carefully pour in a few tablespoons of water, simmer until most of the water’s gone, and by then the cardamom seeds are a bit softened. When most of the water’s gone I put that into a small bowl and wipe the pan out with paper towel and add the seeds and liquid back in a bit later.)

Once the onions start sizzling, drizzle a bit of water in (again being very careful, it’ll try to spit) and let that completely evaporate, then reduce the heat, check if the onions are soft. When they are:

Add the dry powdered spices and salt and gently fry until the aromas start to stand out. (If you’re still using slow gentle heat then this can be toasted for a bit longer than you think you need, just stop short of burning the powders.) 

Once the dry spices are aromatic, add the cardamom & liquid if you did that the way I do, add the water and milk, and bring it to a gentle simmer. Add the peas. Add the fish chunks, stir very gently. If it looks like too much is evaporating, add a bit more milk. 

(Look - I know most recipes faff around with “poach the fish in milk and water, throw away all that flavour and the dairy fats softening the curry flavours…”  - There’s a reason why so many curries and spicy foods have yoghurt or cream or sour cream as side dishes or include them in the recipe.)

Add the cooked rice and lentil mixture. This will absorb the remaining liquid, which is why slightly firmer rice is good. Once the liquid is absorbed, gently fold in most of the eggs, some chopped fresh coriander, and serve. 

 

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SERVING:

You can put aside a few egg wedges and some chopped coriander for dressing when serving. You can also sprinkle some red paprika powder over the dish. (Indian paprika is slightly “sharper” in flavour than the usual red paprika you get at the supermarket but it’s worth it if you make this dish, other curries, and dips like dal and babaganoosh.)
 

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NOTES:

I put a lot of stuff in parentheses in the recipe above. Because this was a flexible recipe but it has some rules. Sorry. 

It's a dish that has curry, rice, smoked fish, coriander (not parsley!) and was usually made for breakfasts by a cook hired to the particular house. The eggs and peas were added because eggs are a breakfast dish to the British and peas were a familiar vegetable, the spices and coriander added the fillip of oriental spice that the expat British enjoyed. 

I make it for dinners rather than breakfasts. My one break with tradition. 😺  (Actually, my breakfasts are always breaks with tradition - I'll probably put up an article here on what I do and why. Promise it's interesting...)
 

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ENJOY!

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Aussie Icon Anniversaries

Just last week I posted about the Aussie icon, Vegemite, reaching a 100-year anniversary, by whatever bumpy and often-offshore means. Now another icon has passed a milestone, but sadly it's not exactly what you might think...

It's Not Vegemite

So Vegemite was an Australian invention. It was modelled around some similar products but as far as I know it was Ausie. It was divisive, you either loved it or loathed it. And we lost it to overseas interests, then got it back.

Sara Lee

Now Sara Lee is undergoing a shake-up. After more than fifty years, Sara Lee is in liquidation. Fair enough, Sara's not a true Aussie but the desserts company became part of the Australian food chain in 1971 when the first Sara Lee facility opened in NSW. 

Now we have the sad news that the Australian arm, Sara Lee Holdings, has entered voluntary administration. Given the evil, greed-driven, and depressing state of the world's "economies," it seems almost like some kind of end-of-the-desserts-world knell of doom. 

Aussies need a much more fair go than we're getting. The planet needs much more of a fair go than it's getting. Please share my articles to raise awareness of these sorts of stories. Wnat to find more of them to share? Click the newspaper in the graphic below to find a list of all the most recent of my articles. You'll find quite a few to enjoy and share, across all the different topics that the different blogs cover.  The further the distribution the articles get, the more people will get these messages and start caring for our good companies, our beneficial organisations, and how to mitigate our impact on the planet that's creating the disaster we're sliding into.

EDIT 3 Nov 2023: At least our list isn't this long...

Please use the links in the graphic above. Use the Mastodon link to chat with me, the newspaper to see my News Stand where you can see ALL my recent posts and subscribe to a once-a-week newsletter. 

You can also help me by sharing the link to this recipe to your social media or messaging sites. 

You can help me most of all by using the Ko-Fi mug or Paypal to make a donation to help me keep all these things online. 

Vegemite Scores A Century!

The iconic - and divisive - Aussie legend has been in production for 100 years. (Or out if you're one of those people who can't stand it.)

The iconic (and no matter which side of the debate you fall, you can't deny its status as a slightly tarnished Aussie icon) spread was born from a desire to make an Australian equivalent to the British Marmite, and was at various times up against (and sometimes using) such marketing gems of names like Promite, MightyMite, AussieMite, OzEmite - and my personal favourite but most regrettable, Parwill. 

In 1922 Fred Walker directed Cyril Callister to come up with the Australian version of Marmite and Callister did it by autolysing spent beer brewer's yeast. A competition was held to name the new product, and Fred's daughter Sheilah chose the name Vegemite out of the pool because the name Fred had chosen, "Pure Vegetable Extract" apparently failed to set hearts alight or even suggest that the product was similar to Marmite. It was for a while renamed to Parwill (Ma might? But Pa will! a really silly schoolyard pun) but luckily the name was reverted to Vegemite or we'd have a whole new level of cringeworthiness to deal with. 

Stop. Whoa. Dundee Time. 

I'd like you to reflect for a moment on the collected Australiana in that paragraph above. A really crappy Dad joke pun, a guy named Fred, another guy named Cyril, a sheila named Sheilah, beer waste turned to yet another beer product. Young Einstein eat your heart out. You're toast. Lastly, notice that it's the 100 year anniversary of that name, a century. And in cricket (Yay for Aussie cricket) a century is a score to be proud of. You get the Crocodile Dundee / Paul Hogan reference for free.

Good News Week

In Australia there was a TV weekly comedy/news show called Good News Week. It was a success, it was Aussie larrikinism at its best, and it included this segment of video that for me, cemeneted Vegemite as our most iconic icon ever. If you're eager to just see that iconinc minute and a bit of TV skip to 3:15 in the timeline, but I reckon you should just enjoy the plot developing. Reg Hunter's comment pretty much sums it up. Every audience member knew that jingle. You just don't get more Aussie or iconic than that. 

So say "Happy Century Vegemite!" It's had a pretty checkered innings but it's still there and not out.

And A Sad Departure:

Another Aussie iconic product, Fantales, sadly however won't be marking a 100th year, with manufacturer Allen's ending production earlier this year in July after a still-respectable 93 years of delighting children's tastebuds and curiosities about the stars of the world. 

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Food Cooking The Green Way - part 2 of many

I've posted about rice cookers as a very inexpensive way to cook and use less energy, make fewer dishes to wash up, and generally make your kitchen life a lot easier. I'll add a few more notes on them here, and continue on to a few related things.

I know there are some bloody expensive rice cookers out there that have programs for everything. But do they make for better rice? Undoubtedly - if you're new to cooking rice. Are they more versatile? Possibly. But even a cheap Big-W AUD$13 rice cooker is okay if you want to take the time to get to know them. 

The biggest secret to rice is the rice to water ratio. The second biggest, and which affects that ratio the most, is what type of cooker you have. If you use a saucepan then 1 portion of rice by volume to 2 portions of water by volume is about right. If the saucepan has a tight-fitting lid, you can use less water, but you'll need to dial it in. If you have a AUD $400 computerised Ferrari of the rice cooker world, you might get away with a 1:1 ratio. Most of my rice cookers like a 1:1.5 ratio - 1 cup rice to 1.5 cups water. 

But also - in the saucepan, don't boil the guts out of the rice. Bring it to the boil then reduce to a simmer. Much nicer rice. Even my simple rice cooker can do that - it cooks until the water's all evaporated and the temperature internally goes above 100C, then reduces its heat to the keep warm setting. 

So - you don't need the best appliances, just tips, tricks, and techniques - and I have plenty of those for you. 

But Wait There's More

I'm assuming a small (0.75litre or so) so-called "mini" rice cooker here. They're the best for a single person or for preparing rice or beans etc as a side dish/carb for two.

Most rice cookers have a short period of time where the temperature can be above 100C before their thermostat kicks in. That's where a nice sautee comes in. Put in some peanut or vegetable oil, some choppped onions, meat, vegetables, whatever, and put the lid on and hit "cook." After a few minutes you'll hear sizzling, then the "click!" as it turns to the keep warm setting. Let it go another minute, open the lid, use a chopstick or other wooden implenet to stir and decide - another sautee? 

If not, add softer vegetables and rice, stock, flavourings and seasonings, and let it cook the meal to the end.

This is a one-pot meal (don't eat it from the rice cooker though, you'll mess up the coating) and as simple as it gets. 

I've also used rice cookers to prepare lentils and small beans like mung or field beans, you just need to put in less than a cup of the dry food and more water, you'll need to find your own ratio here or may even have to add a second lot of water for some.

You can also make cous cous or polenta, cook buckwheat, pasta, or boil two minute noodles. You get the idea - for a person who boiled eggs and pasta in an electric kettle in one's student days (and we've all been there, right? Hunger and lack of funds produce ingenuity) these gadgets are an eye-opener. I'd go as far as to say that I wish this was the first appliance I bought instead of an electric kettle and toaster. 

Beyond The Rice Cooker

Appliances I've tried and found multiple uses for:

• Pressure Cooker: This old gadget was a game-changer for cooking, reducing cooking times for difficult foods by an order of magnitude, and people developed a plethora of recipes  to take advantage of the technological marvel of the day.
• The Toaster: These two devices I wasn't going to bother with but then I remember shared house days...
• The Kettle: Between the toaster and the kettle, we made entire dinners. So yeah, I'll include them both.
• Sandwich Press: Sandwich presses and panini presses are great little cooking gadgets that are so simple that they've become one of the more versatile ways to get stuff done. 
• Microwave: This is pretty much THE modern appliance to start New Wave Of Cooking, after all. Ther were electric kettles and toasters, but they were just advances of existing devices.
• Instant Pot: This is one of those devices that everyone had to have a few years ago, but are now old hat. They do have a good range of uses though
• Electric Pressure Cooker: I have one. It pretends to be an IP but it has far fewer uses than the instant pot, is still a valuable part of my kitchen
• Air Fryer: in the last few years a new thing's arisen, the air fryer. There are so many variations and they're the ne plus ultra of current kitchen "healthy" appliances. I haven't used one but I have my doubts.
• Steam Oven: More recently I found out about these - their angle is that they're a tabletop oven (like the AF mentioned above) but they generate steam and circulate that to conduct heat into the food. 
• Tabletop Oven: There were also many tabletop ovens and toasters, up to the size of microwaves and having one or two heating elements to them. 
• Tabletop Convection Oven: A good cross between the AF and the tabletop ovens, these had a large thermal glass bowl on some kind of stand, and a glass lid with the actual heating gear in it. 
• Dehydrators, Vacuum Sealers: Yep I consider dehydrating a kitchen and cooking hack, especially when making biltong or jerky, veg crisps, tomato (and of course other vegetables) powder, drying out bread cubes for crouton or dumplings. 
• Blenders, Food Processors, Stick Blenders, Stand Mixers, Hand Mixers, Juicers, Graters, Grinders, Mincers, Pasta Rollers and Presses, oh yeah and Ice-cream Makers: You get the idea... These things are designed to be versatile and I don't think I'll be able to suggest recipes that push the envelope that haven't already been covered in the decades that we've had them.
• Anything else not covered above: There are of course slicers dicers and Flying Spaghetti Monster knows what else, I'll endeavour to cover all those I've found useful and versatile as well.

For instance, mandolines and V slicers are great for making Julienne strips or fine dice, so are rotary slicers like the ones you see in delis. The old potato chip press has helped me make several sizes and styles of cubed vegetables, a potato ricer can, as it turns out, also squish over-cooked pasta or rice for thickening soups and stews. I'll get to these in future posts. Juicing vegetables and then putting both the juice and pressings into soups and stews produces incredibly flavourful meals. 

If you want me to research air fryers and steam ovens etc you could help me acquire them by scrolling to the footer and using my groovy graphic to make a donation or regular donation, and while you're there subscribe to my newsletter via the News Stand link. Also by sharing this article and others like it so I get a bit more of an audience and perhaps a new patron or donation... 

For the moment - and to start the whole topic off - I'll put a few uses for pressure cookers that aren't totally according to "the rules" but still worth remembering. Pressure cookers are great at turning dried beans into cooked beans / meals or semi-cooked for use in other dishes. They're excellent for turning a tough cut into fork-pulled roast. I've used ours to extract bone broth for future soups, to cook vegetables soft enough to blitz and then add to soups and stews. 

A Quick Disclaimer and Claimer(???)

If all you want are quick meals then I'll probably disappoint. I mean, I make my meal preps and cooking times as quick as possible using all these appliances, but my main aim is to extract every bit of value from the ingredients I buy, and make the meals as flavourful and tasty as I possible can. My wife calls me The Grand Poobah Of Soups / Stews / pretty much any meals I cook because of my focus on making the food good, nutritious, and so tasty that not a scrap is left after the meal. 

And these days that's becoming more important again. Because food waste is quite often to a meal not being enjoyed and so thrown out, or "oh, I can't cook those coriander roots / spring onion roots in this meal!" when the truth is that those are "food waste" not "crap waste" and deserve a better fate than being dropped into the compost bag. Are you throwing out the prawn ("shrimp") shells and heads when you make that specialty garlic prawns main dish? Why? Put them on a baking tray in a hot oven for ten - twenty minutes, throw them in a pot with a pinch of salt and simmer for ten - twenty more minutes, then strain the broth and concentrate it, freeze it for the next seafood dish that you want to mega-boost the flavour of. 

We never get a ready-roasted chicken but that the bones aren't immediately PC'ed for bone broth or stock. Ditto if I bone out a roast, or chops for the medallions. Ends of carrots / celery / onions / what-have-you? I sometimes gather those things in a silicone freezer bag and when I have enough, use the PC to pressure cook the he-l out of them, then concentrate the liquid, turning a few kilos of scrap vegetables into half a glass of frozen vegetable stock concentrate. Saves so much space in the freezer and it can happen in the background while I'm making dinner or whatever.

By using these (mostly) electric cooking gadgets I end up using the gas cooker (that I can't change, being a renter) a lot less and that means less greenhouse gases in the world. Unless the meal is a gassy vegetable meal and then all bets are off! 😼

Anyhow - see you next article or recipe!

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Mushrooms. Gippsland. Mayhem.

This is just a fairly short post. I'm using a fairly topical and still under investigation because many people still want to know about what occurred here, but my lesson is VERY tangential to that, it's more of a question really - about us being very deliberately separated from our food knowledge.

Okay - the story here is that four people (possibly five) were struck down with food poisoning, three passed away from the effects of the toxin, one is in a stable but still quite acute condition, and the 5th may be the suspect. This revolves around a media circus, a bunch of sometimes contradictory statements, a lot of supposition, and a handful of facts. You read it, be the judge. I say it's just not able to be decided on the few things that have been revealed. 

UPDATE: 11 Sept 2023: One thing more to support my position that we've been dumbed down with reagrd to our food knowledge: A month or more after the events that prompted me to think about our relationship to food, mushroom sales are still down. (Also, sorry the article may have appeared disorganised before this update - in fact that was caused by me clicking the update button, without realising, before I'd re-assembled the article in its updated form.)

Why Is This A Subject?

How many of you reading this are competent at mushroom foraging? I consider myself a bit of a forager but not with mushrooms. You can eat any mushroom once, not quite so many twice. You can make a mis-identification and realise it after consuming them - and by then it's too late as the toxins in the wrong mushroom start destroying your organs, all you can do is pray you can live without your liver and kidneys and half a stomach or whatever. They are unforgiving. 

So?

Well, I was born in Europe at the edge of Alps country, but all of that area for thousands of kilometres around has abundant crops of mushrooms to be had. And many of my family there lived on the land and identifying the right and wrong types was almost second nature to them. Had I stayed out on the farm, I'd have absorbed the knowledge of that imperceptibly, and now know the hundreds of species of mushrooms from Belgium to Sicily to France and back that are edible and more importantly, the ones that are not... 

How many types of mushrooms are there in my local supermarket? Swiss Browns, White mushrooms, button mushrooms. If I went to herbs and spices and weird stuff section of that cooler, I might find styrofoam trays of Oyster, Shitake, Enoki, Pins, and maybe Straw mushrooms. There are quite literally thousands of others and many of them grow wherever you are. But unless someone shows you which ones are edible (and more importantly, shows you all the local ones NEVER to try) or you have an endless supply of test subjects and can wait for a fortnight for any to show ill effects, you won't know.

The Point - 

is that my folks back there would have known all that and passed it on to me. Someone in the past may have paid the ultimate price for identifying the wrong ones, but that lesson was passed down through generations so as not to cause more deaths. It's one of the reasons we have traditions, teachings, and recipes. 

I've just grabbed a stock photo thumbnail from a random image search, but you get the idea - for each species there, there are sub-species that are also okay, sub-species that are decidedly not, and a lot of other species that look similar but aren't. 

There are only two or three types there and they're likely to be non-toxic.

 And how's that working out for the supermarkets? Just lovely, thank you. They have customers that wouldn't know an edible fungus from a hole in the ground so if they want safe mushrooms they have to buy them at the supermarket. Or they can go pick 30 edible ones and one look-alike, and then everyone will avoid free mushrooms like the plague. 

There's a (very short) link to an article here before, the linked article is about food misinformation, long story short, things like kids thinking hot dogs and bacon and cheese are vegetables, popcorn is animal-based. 

I also collect stories like the mother chiding her child's teachers for teaching that fish come from the sea because "everyone knows they come from the supermarket." Or the person berating a person online, who admitted to being a hunter, and the naive person told them off well and good telling them to stop going out and "killing animals, just get your meat at the supermarket where it's just there on styrofoam trays." 

Have you heard that bacon isn't a meat but a garnish? I have. That cheese is vegan? I have. Follow me for more true facts like that . . . 

And the supermarkets continue to try to foster food ignorance - from things like replacing "HFCS" with "sweetener" and similar tactics. Food companies will also commit quite deliberate and bare-faced fraud. Don't let labels with great claims ("they wouldn't lie about it being organic, would they?") fool you, either.

What Does That Even Mean?

I present a well-known chilli pepper sauce with another meaningless term. "Aged for up to 3 years"

That can mean it was sold 3 weeks after being made. It's either aged for three years or it isn't. "Up to" is meaningless drivel, providing no assurance of any kind. And when you look at the ingredients you see that it's distilled vinegar and salt and chilli peppers. That doesn't generally tend to ferment any further as the acid and salt will inhibit fermentation bacteria. 

The original sauce actually was fermented for a certain period of time, but the acid content was provided by lactic acid which is produced when you add just the right amount of salt to a vegetable to favour the growth of a lactobacillus bacteria. It's how sauerkraut and kimchi are made, and also properly fermented gherkin and other vegetable pickles. 

So this is just an attempt to cash in on the mystique of the original product. Ah well... 

On the subject of total drivel is another pet peeve of mine:- "New And Improved!"

Ah... No... No, it isn't. It's either new, in which case it can't have been improved upon, or it's an existing product that's been improved. I know it's technical hair-splitting but it points out the exact kinds of bullshit food corporations get away with. Because we let them off the hook. 

KEEP THE BASTARDS HONEST!

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Food Autonomy- part 1 of many.

A Series Of Cooking Tips & Hacks For Sustainable Climate-Friendly Kitchens.

Hi! I've started this series in my Tuckertime blog for sustainable, fossil-fuel-free, climate-friendly kitchens. With the soon-to-be-enacted banning of new gas installations on the horizon, gas and wood-burning stoves are also being phased out. Here are some transitional technologies that will allow you to ditch the gas stove and start living in the 21st (and possibly even the 22nd) Century. The first two articles were my Lumina ice cream maker article and then the rice cooker article. Now dig in and enjoy this article. 

Future Kitchens

I firmly believe that "kitchens" as they exist today are going away. It's sad (having beautiful memories of having spent many cold evenings in a warm kitchen as a child and young adult) but with climate change sweeping over us, it's inevitable. The kitchen has undergone many metamorphoses in our time this last civilisation cycle, from a fire hearth in the open to caves then to communal hearths and once again private in huts and homes, then we've had markets and prepared food stalls and dining houses, and even now we have examples of all those types of eating/cooking facilities around the world.

But with climate change we're going to have to change once again. This article is part of a series on this blog, on ways that I see kitchens changing and things you can do if you prefer some food autonomy. 

Food Autonomy

I don't mean just that you grow your own food, although that's a cool goal. I don't mean just retaining your own kitchen, even though that's going to be an issue that I think has yet to be decided by the world at large. I mean being able to distinguish between bullshit foods and good foods, bullshit cooking utensils and and genuinely worthwhile ones. You'll find that some things are a valuable addition to your cooking equipment, others are just a good way to waste valuable resources by making a piece of crap that has no function other than extract some money from you and then some more when you have to pay (one way or another) for it to be recycled or it ends up as yet more plastic and heavy metal pollution. 

So this series of articles is going to explore as many scenarios as my fevered fertile imagination can come up with, from Star Trek food replicators to community solar cookers, or even - if the situation becomes dire enough, and who knows if that won't come to pass? - survival cooking in the wilds. One just never knows, do one? 

My articles are going to cover possible futures (This article) and then drill down to specific things as can be done right now. I'll maintain a list of them updated in this article, so when you come back in a week, the newest article will have become a link in the list below.

The List

1. Using Lumina Ice Cream Maker. This is a very old article about getting a very simple ice cream maker and putting it to a few less usual uses. 
2. Rice Cooker Meals. This really started me exploring alternatives. There are so many ‘Instant Pots’ and “Rice Cookers’ and ‘Eco Pots’ out there and I cover a few of them and also add a few recipes I've made with just rice cookers as the cooking device.
3. Food Autonomy. That's this article. 
4. Small Hotplates. There are several kinds of hotplates, resistive element and induction, and of course, the old favourite, the camping gas cooker, using bottled or cartridge gas.
5. Ovens And Ovens. There are several varieties of tabletop ovens from the ridiculous to the sublime to air fryers and steam ovens. Any good?
6. Mixers Blenders Juicers. 
7. Slicing and Dicing. 

These are going to come out at irregular intervals as I have time to write, and more importantly - money to test some options. You can help yourself by using the links in the graphic just below here to subscribe to my once a week newsletter where you can find out what I've most recently posted. You can also help me by using one of the support options to send a few bucks my way so that I can obtain more devices to test, pay for costs involved, etc.

The Preferred Options

Food Authenticity

It's difficult for us to keep up a good diet when forces of capitalism and money are involved. It invariably comes down to the most inexpensive. If a manufacturer can shave a cent per kilogram off the cost of a food or add one cent's worth of extra value to the pric

e of it, they will make more money - and that makes them a more successful predator than their competitor. One of the ways this always plays out is with the health-promoting and nutritional values of foods. There's no way around this, cheaper is less nutritionally valuable, less beneficial to health - all the way down to Soylent... 

So buying a ready-made meal is always a throw of the dice. Going to a fast food outlet is a gamble. Even going to a restaurant or cafe or diner can have poor outcomes. The more processed a food is, the more processors are operating on that food on its way to you. Each one shaves a cost, takes a shortcut, adds an adulterant. Cumulatively, the result is something that isn't 100% food any more, which can in fact be far less nutrition than you'd be led to believe.

For instance, when the entire world consistently produces only enough olives for the preserved olive market (which are hard to fake) and one hundred million litres of olive oil (which is easy to fake) and yet year after year sells two hundred and fifty million litres, you know that one hundred and fifty million litres aren't actually olive oil. 

Your job is to guess which brand is genuine 100% olive oil, which ones have the least corn oil added, and which ones are just any crap oil which has been boiled with olive pits or in some other way made to smell and taste a bit like olive oil... 

THAT is what I mean by food authenticity.

And it isn't just the bottle of oil for your pantry in this case. Those pickled vegetables in 'olive oil' you just bought - what oil are they floating in really? The pasta aglio e olio you just got served at your lunchtime restaurant - where did they get their oil from? And so on. 

And this train of thought gets infinitely worse when you consider another particularly revolting trend that at this stage seems to be mainly concentrated in China - 'grease trap oil.' And it's every biut as revolting as it sounds. Restaurateurs (or someone they buy their cheap cooking oil from) who go around skimming the oil off rubbish skips and bins of restaurant food waste, from the grease traps in the kitchen sewage, and anywhere else that they can, sometimes filtering or boiling it and then re-selling and re-using it. 

That's also what I mean by food authenticity... Don't forget that some of your olive oil may have even come from this inexpensive source. If you buy some lesser-known brands of Asian cooking oil, there's even a possibility that they're selling reprocessed grease trap oil directly and not just as an additive.

So our kitchens are a place where we can do our best to only have wholesome authentic food cooked in ways that preserves the nutritional value. To me that's one of the most important functions of a home kitchen and so I hope we keep having that room in the house. 

Food Preparation

As the world currently stands, many (mostly, the developed) countries are living a lifestyle where a kitchen almost doesn't make sense any more. They wake, get dressed, and have breakfast at a diner or stall on the way to work, then have lunch at an eatery local to their workplace before picking up a cooked takeaway meal on the way home. The kitchen gets used to re-heat leftovers and make a snack now and then, and is almost a wasted room. This is saddening because it indicates a swing away from home-cooked meals and with that, a departure from the 'nuclear family' which in this case means a family forming a nucleus, not the Jetsons.

That's not to say that this is entirely unknown. In ancient Greece and Rome there's evidence that there were a lot of fast food places - almost certainly indicating that people below a certain income ate almost exclusively food prepared by street vendors or people who cooked meals in their homes and took in diners much as a restaurant does. There's evidence that families sent the children away to apprentice, or to work at farms or other businesses, or to get an education. 

So we're used to families being a somewhat fragmented concept. Don't forget that early families often bred profusely precisely because limited local resources would either kill children or force them to move away (or be sold, indentured, or just chased away) and so the best course of action was to keep replenishing the youthful workforce by having more of them. 

We've also had 'stone age nuclear' families - in the stone age - where we probably had a hearth and kitchen wherever we happened to be, but the child was valuable and so was kept along with the family to learn the skills and become a new successful hominid. Sorry to bring families into this essay about kitchens but the fact is that partially, the things we do around kitchens and food is to do with one other uniquely human thing, our extremely long upbringing of our children. That ties in with culture and education and is another reason that kitchens are one of the focii of our civilisation. 

But also - and if managed properly and operated with a focus on quality over profit or cost - the idea of abandoning the home kitchen altogether makes some sense. We got to our current state of technological and cultural achievement through specialisation - one person farms, one person logs timber, another person makes furniture and utensils for the kitchen, a miner mines metals, a smith makes the pans and metal utensils, and so forth. Remember those ancient fast food places? They were operated by specialists too. 

In a few days there'll be a post about corporate food BS, look for it after Sept 6th. For now, I'll close this with a hint to the next part: What Are You Cooking With? If you rent or are cost-conscious, the old-style electric range consumes far too much energy for what it does. Induction cooking ranges are more energy-efficient but costly to buy. And electric ovens still have to have resistive heating elements. But there are appliances that will allow you to try these things out and bypass gas or resistive electric cooking and big expensive-to-run whitegoods. See you on the next one!

Go on - use the pic above to subscribe to my once a week newsletter, or help me with a donation to keep these blogs and experiments running, or use the Mastodon link to chat with me. 

Dual ReBeans

NAME: _ReBean

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INGREDIENTS/UTENSILS:

1 small onion

2-3 cloves garlic

1 small tin black beans

150g approx green beans

1 beef stock cube

1/2tsp each ground cumin, coriander, currypowder, raw sugar 

Olive oil

water

cooking salt
ground black pepper

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METHOD:

Wash the green beans and cut into 2-3cm pieces, set aside.

Peel and cut the onion into thin longitudinal wedges, (about 16 - 24) place oil and a sprinkle of salt in a frying pan, add the onion and drained black beans (retain the liquid for other recipes if you like) when the oil is hot, fry gently until onions begin to brown and beans to soften and become almost refried.

Add the spices and green beans and gently fry for another minute or two, add enough water to cover, crumble the beef stock cube in and stir.

Peel and mince the garlic, add and stir, then let gently simmer for about 20 more minutes.

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SERVING:

Serve as a side dish for something like my Ted-style "Corn" chips (which are actually beef coated in fine polenta) or similar.  

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NOTES:

The flavours go with Mexican, Spanish, or Indian/Curry cuisines.

Serves 2 - 4 depending on sides

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ENJOY!

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Ted-style "Corn" Chips (Meaty!)

NAME: _Mex Flavours Thin Rissoles

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INGREDIENTS/UTENSILS:

Rissoles

250g not too lean minced beef

1/2cup quick oats flakes

2 eggs

2 tbsp mayonnaise

2-3 tbsp dried crumbled onions

1 tsp salt

1 tsp raw sugar

1-2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp smoked paprika

"Breading"

2cups fine ground polenta

Olive oil for frying.

Sauce

Jar of salsa (I got mine at a "good. different" supermarket chain.)

splash of olive oil 

pinch of ground cayenne, cumin, coriander

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METHOD:

In a suitable mixing bowl, add the beef, oatflakes, break in the eggs, add the rest of the "Rissoles" ingredients and mix well. I suggest spoon mixing for a few minutes, letting it sit for a few, mixing again. You're aiming for a slightly thicker consistency than sugar cookie dough. 

Keep it cool (maybe in the fridge) until ready to make. (You could make this a day ahead.)

When ready, put about two cups of fine polenta  in a deep plate, take rissole mixture and form into balls about 3cm diameter, then roll them in the polenta and flatten them into thin disks. Pat more polenta onto both sides, shake off, then in batches fry crispy on both sides in olive oil and set aside. 

Make sauce by simmering salsa, olive oil, and spices in small saucepan, drizzle over rissoles and toss to coat. 

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SERVING:

Serve with rice and a few sides. (See later recipes, I'll add recipes for some reasonable side dishes.) 
Serves 2 - 4 depending on other dishes / side dishes.

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NOTES:

As noted in Method, the rissole mix can be made up to a day ahead of time if covered and refrigerated.

Refried beans, spicy green beans, and spicy fried cabbage are all good matches to these. You don't need to coat them in the salsa but damn - it makes them sing.  I suspect they'd also go well with my Green Tomato Chutney.

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ENJOY!

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Green Tomato Chutney

NAME: _Green Tomato Chutney a la Ted

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INGREDIENTS/UTENSILS:

For every:

1 kg green (un-ripe) tomatoes 

Use:

2 - 3 onions ~~450 - 550 grams, diced a bit chunky

4 tsp salt un-iodised table salt

2.5 - 3 cups raw sugar

95 ml Ezi Sauce *see my recipe for clone Ezi Sauce here.

1 teaspoon mustard powder

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 teaspoon cornflour

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

Also needed:

Quantity of pickling jars with lids, washed and sterilised, enough for the quantity you intend to make. 

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METHOD:

Chop tomatoes to roughly 1cm - 2cm. Keep seeds and gel with them. 

Chop onions roughly around 1cm - 2cm. Add to the tomatoes.

Use a bowl big enough to hold those quantities of ingredients, add the required amount of salt, stir through, then cover and leave in a cool place or the refrigerator for 12hrs at least. 

Put the tomato/onion mix into a pot, keeping all the liquid that the salt drew out as well, bring to the boil over low heat. 

Add relevant amounts of sugar and Ezi Sauce and stir together, then simmer it uncovered over low heat for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Make sure it doesn't catch and burn. 

Turn off heat, add remaining ingredients (curry and mustard powder, turmeric, cornflour) and stir then turn heat back on for ten minutes to simmer and combine. 

Put into the prepared sterile jars, put lids on, let cool. 

 

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SERVING:

Look up uses for chutney, hehehe. I cook with it sometimes, and we definitely have cheese/chutney and cold meat/chutney sandwiches regularly. 
 

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NOTES:

A weird and late start to my tomato plants gave us around five kilos of green tomatoes  towards the end of the season, and you can only eat so many fried green tomatoes . . . So I dug around in my recipes and found an old recipe I've used in the past (also works for apple cucumber chutney BTW, just adjust cooking times and cornflour a bit) and then realised it used Ezi Sauce so I hunted down a recipe online, tried it, realised it wasn't the way I remembered Ezi Sauce, and put that recipe on here as well.

Make sure your jars are well cleaned, sterilised, and boiled for this, get the chutney into them very hot and seal immediately, and they'll keep a few months in a cool place. (Ours won't last long enough to be a problem...) We had around 4kg of tomatoes and used 12 jars of 210ml size with a bit of chutney left over. 
 

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ENJOY!

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Home Made Pickling Vinegar (Ezi Sauce clone)

NAME: _Home Made Pickling Vinegar (Ezi Sauce clone)

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INGREDIENTS/UTENSILS:

15 grams whole cloves ---------------\

15 grams whole black peppercorns---- (See Note 1)

7 grams chilli flakes mild

30 grams ginger fresh, washed, scraped, and chopped (See Note4)

400- 500 ml double-strength white vinegar 8% acidity

1 tsp un iodised cooking salt 

1 litre double-strength white vinegar 8% acidity (See Note 3)

 

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METHOD:

Use a glass jar with tight-fitting lid that's 1.2 - 1.5 litres in size. Put in the vinegar, salt, and sugar/molasses if using, stir or shake until dissolved. Add in the other ingredients, put the lid on tightly and shake. Leave it to stand for at least 12hrs, 24hrs preferred, then strain through some fairly fine weave like calico or handkerchief cotton into a clean glass bottle. It'll keep for ages, months, if left unopened. (Note 5)

 

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SERVING:

It's not actually a serving idea per se, instead it's used in pickles and chutneys etc. I've also added a small splash to a salad vinegar/oil vinaigrette for interest. 
 

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NOTES:

Note 1: Purists will say "whole" black peppercorns and cloves, I say put them in a piece of parchment paper then into a teatowel and crack them with whatever you have. Don't pound them to dust, just break them open a bit. 
Note 2: Experiment - I've improved over the original recipe by adding 1 tsp of crumbled cinnamon bark as well. Also 1 tsp raw sugar or molasses (molasses preferred) adds "body" to the end product.   

Note 3: DON'T be tempted to use the normal white vinegar, pickling needs more acidity that only double-srength can provide. Usually only a half litre is used for the amount of ingredients but I've found that the flavour is overpowering at that strength so I opted to add half a litre more vinegar. Start with the 500ml, taste test after 12hrs, and if, like me, you found it unpleasantly strong, add 250ml - 500ml more double strength.

Note 4: I don't peel the ginger, rather wash and scrape lightly with a spoon, also thin slices with a mandoline are as good as chopping.

Note 5: The vinegar goes dark - it's meant to. Also - keeping it in a dark brown bottle will retain the colour, clear glass lets light in and that fades the colour after time. 

Also, you can find my recipe for Green Tomato Chutney here where I've already used the vinegar to make several batches.

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ENJOY!

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