+++SCOFF! - The free email newsletter on good food and drink. - ISSUE SIX, MAY 2005. For a printable colour version of this newsletter (in a ‘pdf’ file), see: http://www.gastronomail.com/archive.htm . Please forward to all your friends and colleagues so they can register to receive their own copy each month by email, at: http://www.gastronomail.com . We never pass on email addresses. Further information at the end of this issue. ++Issue Six Contents: 01: An A-Z of Scoff: the alphabet of food wisdom - ‘F’ is for ‘Fish’. Which are we allowed to eat? 02: Spring book offers - Three exclusive discounts for Scoff! readers. 03: The unchanged principles of an ancient food culture - Review: The Concise Gastronomy of Italy, by Anne Del Conte. Reviewed by Dan Jellinek. 04: Recipe: Eliza Acton’s oxtail stew - by Elizabeth Ray. 05: The drink spot: Make mine a Churchill - Halves, magnums, Jeroboams: a bottle size for every occasion, by Jason Yapp. 06: Titbits and crumbs: Web menus ruling – New Zealand case; Japanese knives – drool over them online; Discover the Taste – Scottish events. 07: The food spot: The messman’s dilemma Firefighters need their own fuel, and lots of it. Antony Julyan, a Blue Watch messman, uncovers the secrets of station cuisine. 08: How to: Make ices without cream - Avocado, rhubarb and yoghurt ice: cool innovation by Elizabeth Ray. [Contents ends]. +01: An A-Z of Scoff: the alphabet of food wisdom - ‘F’ is for ‘Fish’. Just as we’re being told to eat more fish for health reasons, especially those rich in omega-3 fatty acids such as herring, mackerel (with the highest amount), salmon, trout and fresh tuna (but not tinned), we’re being told to eat fewer fish for environmental reasons. Anyone who wants the bad news should read Charles Clover’s book The End of the Line, How Overfishing is Changing the World and What we Eat, just out in paperback (see our review in Scoff! issue two). The good news is there are more fish in the sea – for now. The concerned consumer needs to consider not just the different types, going for under-used ones such as herring and pollack, but also how they are caught. Line-caught fish or those landed by local boats, often marked in fishmongers as ‘day-boat’ fish, are two tags to look out for, and most British shellfish is harvested sustainably. The Marine Stewardship Council (http://www.msc.org) has an accreditation system for fisheries based on sound environmental principles and its web site lists where to find their certified products in different supermarkets. And the Marine Conservation Society has a list of species they are worried about, which acts as an excellent checklist for what not to buy (see its web site at http://www.fishonline.org). In Britain, we import more fish than we catch; we also export much of what we land. Perhaps part of the solution to the fish crisis is for us to value the variety of what is on our shores, be prepared to pay for it and celebrate what we have locally and can safely eat, rather than giving it all up in confusion and fear. Ultimately, it is the engaged consumer who has most chance of making a positive difference. +02: Spring Book Offers: Discounts for Scoff! Readers. Spring book offers Scoff! Readers can take advantage of a series of great offers. Here is a round-up, and do visit our web site for more. Bread of Heaven: The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard, published by Mitchell Beazley, sheds new light on the ancient craft of breadmaking. Scoff! readers can purchase a copy at the special price of £16 — 25% off — by calling 01903 828503 and quoting PUB195. Bloodlines and Grapevines: Receive a 20% discount on Scoff! wine editor Jonathan Ray's new book Bloodlines and Grapevines, a fascinating tour around the world's great wine-making families. Reader price is £24, with free postage and packing. Please call 01903 828503, quoting H832. Sweetness and Light: Sweetness & Light: The Mysterious History of The Honey Bee by Scoff! Consultant Editor Hattie Ellis, published by Sceptre, is available at the special price of £14.50 including p&p. Please call 0870 7552122 and quote BSH139A. +03: The Unchanged Principles of an Ancient Food Culture. - The Concise Gastronomy of Italy, by Anna Del Conte - Reviewed by Dan Jellinek. Some food books are excellent for their research and historical insights; some for their recipes; and some for their tips, advice and reference materials. Anna Del Conte’s book is strong in all three areas: a treasure-house of information on everything relating to cooking in Italy from Archestratus, a Sicilian poet from the fourth century BC who wrote a poem about the freshness of fish, to the founding in 1953 of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, tasked with safeguarding culinary traditions and improving Italian cooking through cultural research. This approach could also sum up the ethos of this book, which covers an astonishing amount of ground in 400-odd pages: a section of the development of Italian gastronomy; a section on the Italian culture of food, which stresses the importance of local and regional ingredients and traditions; a run through all the regions of Italy, with their various specialities; an extensive collection of recipes; an A-Z of ingredients; a section on terms and techniques; and a section on wine. The recipes are gutsy and earthy, remaining close to true local rural Italian cooking, and some are historical recipes which are a fascinating demonstration of how little the main principles of Italian cooking have changed down the centuries. The A-Z of ingredients reveals the range and depth of produce available to the Italian cook, much of which is even now not widely available in this country. Did you know there are more than 50 types of pasta? Naming them all could be the basis of a good dinner party game. This book is a joy, a good solid counterpart to the more modern takes on Italian cooking by the various celebrity chefs who have raised the profile of Italian food in recent years. This book sets all that in its proper context, and also makes one understand just how far it is this country will have to come before our own food culture is anything like as profound as that to be found across the 20 regions of Italy. NOTE: Scoff! readers can order this book from publishers Pavilion at a special price of £12.99 including p&p (normal price £14.99). Call 0870 787 1613 by 30 June quoting CH322. +04:Recipe: Eliza Acton’s Oxtail Stew - by Elizabeth Ray Oxtail makes one of the best comfort dishes there is for any time of the year, and this method, which is taken from Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery (probably the best of the 19th century cookery books) is a bit lighter than most of the usual recipes, but full of flavour. She recommends adding a little mushroom ketchup towards the end of the cooking time, but I like to add wedges of mushrooms instead. Oxtail takes a long time to cook — at least a couple of hours or more — as the meat must come clean away from the bones to be really good, so this is a good dish for a slow cooker if you have one. 1 oxtail, jointed 2 onions, skinned and sliced 2 carrots, peeled and sliced 1onion skinned but left whole salt and pepper grated rind and juice of half a lemon 6 cloves 15-30 ml (1-2 level tablespoons) arrowroot 4-5 mushrooms cut into wedges. Soak the oxtail in cold water for an hour or so to remove any blood, then drain, put into a large pot and cover with fresh water. Bring to the boil, skimming any scum that forms and add the carrots and sliced onions, the whole onion stuck with cloves, and seasoning. Cover the pot and cook gently until the meat is really tender. Add the mushrooms towards the end of the cooking, with the lemon juice and grated rind. Thicken the liquid with the arrowroot. +05: The Drink Spot: Make mine a Churchill - by Jason Yapp. I was struck recently as I perused the modest collection of bottles I pretentiously call my ‘home cellar’ (the really good stuff has to be kept out of reach, I’m afraid) by the dreadful uniformity of its contents. There was certainly enough variety in terms of style but everything was held within the globally invariant, ubiquitous, standard 75 cl bottle. Don’t get me wrong, I think 75 cl is a wonderful, arguably ideal, size but variety is the spice of life – and I was lacking it. There are many reasons for straying from the standard measure, and plenty of variations. Firstly and most commonly there is the half bottle (37.5 cl), the case for which is indisputable. A full bottle is a hefty dose for a lone imbiber, and half bottles are also good for drivers (sharing), restaurant-goers (more choice) and impromptu picnickers (less baggage). Another asset of the humble half is that they have a greater ratio of air to wine and are thus earlier maturing – conversely larger formats age more slowly, which can also have its advantages. Sadly, however, as worldwide demand for quality wine increases, the willingness of wine producers to bottle in ‘other formats’ diminishes. Neither should the magnum or double bottle (1.5 litres) be overlooked. The name sounds great, especially when ordered with confidence in a restaurant. They look fantastic and add panache to any dinner table. Moreover, they hold twice the volume, which should keep the party going while giving the host less work opening bottles. They are also ideal for ‘laying down’ long term. Two sizes that I eschew are half litres (a largely failed European glass manufacturers’ marketing initiative), whose only possible justification is for sweet wines; and litres – too studenty (and I have been there). One size that is sadly now almost obsolete is the Imperial Pint or ‘Churchill’. Apparently Sir Winston deemed this the perfect size for his own consumption of his beloved Pol Roger Champagne and had bespoke bottlings produced accordingly. Champagne is where one must turn to really enjoy the full gamut of bottle sizes and the names alone justify their continuation: quarter bottles (18.75 cl) are hard to find but are useful for smuggling into hospitals and theatres and have recently enjoyed a revival (in 20cl bottlings) among nightclubbers – who drink them with a straw. We’ve covered halves, bottles and magnums which leads us on to the really good stuff: the Jeroboam or double magnum (3 litres or 4 bottles), Rehoboam or triple magnum (4.5 litres or 6 bottles), Methuselah (6 litres or 8 bottles), Salmanazar (9 litres or 12 bottles), Balthazar (12 litres or 16 bottles), Nebuchadnezzar (15 litres or 20 bottles) and lastly for those feeling particularly festive Melchior (18 litres or 24 bottles) and Solomon (25 litres or just over 33 bottles). Many of these sizes can also be found in Bordeaux, which also boasts the Marie-Jeanne (2.25 litres or 3 bottles) and Imperial (6 litres or 8 bottles). The only problem with bigger bottles is that if they’re out of condition you lose more wine – so it is worth checking terms with your supplier before you invest in anything too grand. That said we have a duty to maintain these ‘odd’ sizes for future generations, and think of the impression you’ll make at the bottle bank. Jason Yapp is Managing Director of wine merchants Yapp Bros (www.yapp.co.uk) +06: Titbits and Crumbs. - Web Menus Ruling A legal ruling from New Zealand will have restaurateurs worldwide scurrying to their websites to check they are up to date. Tony’s Vineyard Restaurant in Waitakere was fined $3,000 after displaying incorrect items and prices on the web version of its menu. The judge ruled: “It is not enough [for the] owner to say the website is outdated for reasons of lack of time or lack of technical knowledge.” http://fastlink.headstar.com/nz1 - Japanese Knives You like drooling over beautiful expensive Japanese knives, even though you can’t possibly afford to buy one – go on, admit it. Drool online – and pick up some good tips on sharpening – at: http://www.japanese-knife.com - Discover the Taste Tasting sessions, walking tours, cookery demonstrations and other events in Scotland, for the visiting gourmet: http://www.discoverthetaste.com NOTE: Scoff! is giving away books on food and wine to readers who send in their favourite link, if published. Email to: dan@gastronomail.com. +07: The food spot: The Messman’s Dilemma - by Antony Julyan Those young enough — or old enough, with their children — to have watched Fireman Sam will already know all about cooking in fire stations. As they will remember, Elvis — he with the quiff — is not only Fireman Sam’s constant companion but cooks all the food, famously on one occasion leaving the sausages behind to burn when they were called out. Elvis is, in fact, the ‘messman’. These desperate individuals may be self-selecting, elected by democratic means or simply singled out to act as scapegoats, but however they are chosen they must walk a perilous line. To explore this dilemma, we first need a little more background. Firemen are divided up into watches, four for each station: red, green, blue and white. This means they work together, train together, sleep in dormitories together and, of course, eat together. Fire brigades are obliged to provide the crews only with appropriate shelter and facilities, so they need to provide their own food, and most watches achieve this by selecting one of their members to collect money from everyone on the watch and in turn provide meals – hence becoming the messman, the hapless hero of our piece. Strangely, the messman is not often the cook; the cook is employed by the brigade and provided as part of its general provision of facilities. So the messman is generally the planner. A skilled and clever meal planner can lead a charmed life and even achieve financial reward. And then there are the rest . . . The food needs of the average firefighter are two-fold, based on volume and taste. Neither must be small. Just to set the issue of volume in context, here is a typical quote from a messman: “Right, they will be wanting pudding soon, and there are 12 of them so 14 Viennese Rolls should do it. Some of them greedy buggers are bound to want seconds.” Beside volume, there is also the reheatability, after all if the diners are called from the table unexpectedly (something of an occupational hazard), upon their return they will expect to resume eating the meal — they paid for it, after all — while basking in the double satisfaction of anticipating seeing a ‘spoilt meal allowance’ appear in their pay packet. Despite initial impressions, however, the messman’s dilemma does not lead to a procession of ready meals and takeaways — after all, someone has already taken the profit potential out of those. In any case, with the link between nutrition and physical ability now firmly established, many will be more aware of the importance of good ingredients. So for the messman, best results are to be obtained by a tight partnership with the cook, locally-bought fresh food (shift workers can often take advantage of odd stock clearance timings in markets and 24- hour retailers) and good use of a freezer. Often the watch will encourage the “probies” (probationers in their first 18 months) to perform dull tasks, releasing the messman to go off-station in search of supplies — one of the perks of the role. But finally, in direct contradiction of all of the worthy sentiments expressed above, here for all you budding messmen out there is the recipe for the basic messman’s failsafe, the ever popular egg and sausage pie. To prepare this feast, share the following equally between three 12- inch pie dishes: 20 sausages browned in a frying pan; 40 rashers of bacon; 2lb of mushrooms; 3 onions, sliced; 30 eggs; and 12 potato waffles. The pastry is baked blind and then the pre-cooked ingredients are added with the potato waffles forming the lid, and the whole baked for an hour. Dilemma solved. 08: How to: Make ices without cream - by Elizabeth Ray It is not necessary to use cream to make ice-cream — though I suppose then it is not strictly speaking ice-cream! There are several bases that can make very good ice confections, as we could call them. You still need quite a lot of sugar, as sweetness diminishes with the cold, and the ices would be tasteless otherwise. An ice-cream maker is useful but not essential, though without one you may have to stir the freezing mixture once or twice to stop crystals forming. 1: Meringue base: Very useful for delicate flavours. Beat the whites of two eggs in a bowl placed over a pan of hot water on low heat. Gradually add 50g of caster sugar and 50g of granulated, beating all the time until the mixture looks like softly whipped cream. Remove from the heat, beat once more and cool. It should keep its shape when cold. 2: Yoghurt: Cream can be replaced by a carton of natural yoghurt, but add a teaspoonful of dissolved gelatine to make it smoother. Again the same amount of sugar unless using a very sweetened fruit puree. 3: Evaporated milk: Not condensed milk. Put the milk into a bowl, add about 75 grams of sugar, and beat until it is almost doubled in size. Can give a light caramel taste, so is best used for chocolate, coffee or similar flavours. 4: Avocado Ice: Make a meringue base as above. Scoop out the flesh from two very ripe avocados, making sure to get right to the shells to get as much green colour as possible. Add the juice of half a lemon then puree. Fold in the meringue mixture and freeze. This is a very delicate taste, and you can add a tablespoon of single cream if you wish. 5: Rhubarb and yoghurt ice: Cut 450grams of rhubarb into 1inch lengths.cook gently with about 75 grams of sugar and the juice of an orange until soft enough to puree. Add the the yoghurt and gelatine, Taste for sweetness, then mix well together and freeze. ++End notes. +HOW TO RECEIVE YOUR REGULAR ‘SCOFF!’ To subscribe to this free monthly bulletin, Send a blank email to scoff-subscribe@gastronomail.com Please encourage your friends and colleagues to subscribe! To unsubscribe at any time, email: scoff-unsubscribe@gastronomail.com For further information on subscription see: http://www.gastronomail.com . +ACCESSIBILITY NOTE: This newsletter conforms to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard, which makes email publications easier to access for people with impaired vision using text-to-speech devices. For details see: http://www.headstar.com/ten . +COPYRIGHT 2004 Gastronomail Ltd. If you would like to reproduce stories from this newsletter, we generally allow this as long as a full credit is included, with our web address and a description of our newsletter. For permission please email jo@gastronomail.com . +PERSONNEL: Food Editor - Dan Jellinek dan@gastronomail.com Drinks editor – Johnny Ray johnny@gastronomail.com Consultant Editor – Hattie Ellis hattie@gastronomail.com Marketing Director – Jo Weatherall jo@gastronomail.com [Issue ends.]