+++SCOFF! - The free email newsletter on good food and drink. - ISSUE NINETEEN, JULY 2007. For a printable colour version of this newsletter, see: http://www.gastronomail.com/archive.htm . Please forward to all your friends and colleagues so they can register to receive their own copy by visiting: http://www.gastronomail.com . ++Issue Nineteen Contents: 01: Editorial: - Gremlins & chickens. 02: An A-Z of Scoff: the alphabet of food wisdom - ‘S’ is for ‘Salt’: How bad for you is it really? 03: Special News Report: Supermarkets ‘will struggle to localise’ - The Soil Association’s Helen Browning talks to Scoff! 04: Recipe: Asparagus Ice-Cream by John Jenkinson. 05: Titbits and Crumbs: British Food Fortnight – September preview; Food Candy – blog collection; World Carrot Museum – vegetable- related trivia. 06: The drink spot: Beer’s flavour rainbow Matching beers with food is surprisingly simple – and can be sensational, says Rupert Ponsonby. 07: The food spot: Doorstep package of earthly delights - Organic food boxes delivered to your door are opening up an exciting new world of good local produce, writes Zoë Cordy-Simpson. 08: How to: Cook scrumptious sushi rice - by Dan Jellinek. 09: Friends of Scoff! - A Select Directory of Our Friends and Helpers. 10: Fruity summer offer: - Fantastic fruity giveaway in association with Villa Maria wines. [Contents ends]. +01: Editorial: Gremlins & chickens Welcome to another issue of Scoff! We are sorry for the longer than usual delay between the last issue and this one – technical gremlins and pressure of other work sometimes slow us down but we promise we will always come up again smiling when you least expect it! In the meantime, our Consultant Editor Hattie Ellis has been busy launching her timely new book, ‘Planet Chicken’. To Scoff! readers, one would hope the book’s central message, of the social and environmental damage caused by the mechanisation of animal farming, is not new. But we would recommend it as a reminder of the need to be on one’s guard against ambiguous terms such as ‘farm assured’ or even ‘free range’. Look out for our offer on the book soon. And we wish everyone a sunny summer full of wonderful picnics and barbeques! - Dan Jellinek and Jonathan Ray, Co-Editors. +02: An A-Z of Scoff: the alphabet of food wisdom - ‘S’ is for Salt According to the UK’s Food Standards Agency, “Most people in the UK eat too much salt”. The agency is spearheading a major campaign to raise awareness of the issues surrounding salt consumption (http://www.salt.gov.uk), including facts such as that 75 per cent of the salt we eat is contained pre-added into foods we buy; that many manufactured foods such as biscuits and breakfast cereals are high in salt without tasting salty; and that ‘posh’ salt – that fancy sea salt you bought from the health store – is just as bad for you as cheap table salt. But is any salt really so bad for you? The FSA admits that if you are young, your risk of encountering health problems associated with high salt intake is less than for older people, even though people seem especially worried about salt intake for children. Jeffrey Steingarten, the American food writer and author of The Man Who Ate Everything, goes further, saying that people rid their diet of salt to avoid countless ‘imagined ills’, but no more than 8 percent of the population is sensitive to salt, and in most people’s bodies it just passes through naturally causing no harm, and adding flavour to food. It would seem that excess salt is not necessarily harmful, at least to most people. On the other hand, excess salt is clearly unnecessary, and is primarily used as a cheap way of imparting flavour to food. So as with MSG, one has to ask oneself – why are they doing this? Could it by any chance be a cheap short-cut to adding flavour to second-rate ingredients, when good quality ingredients would have all the flavour they needed in the first place? +03: Special News Report - Supermarkets ‘will struggle to localise’ - by Dan Jellinek. Supermarkets are likely to struggle with an agenda to use more local suppliers because of a centralising bias built into their distribution systems, a leading food campaigner has told Scoff! Responding to our report last autumn on the supermarket giants’ moves to add local lines to some stores (see Scoff! issue 16, September/October 2006), Helen Browning, Food and Farming Director at the Soil Association, said: “There are two key problems with supermarkets and their new quests to go ‘local’. “One is that supermarkets have invested so heavily in centralised purchasing distribution that they are going to find it extremely difficult to do ‘local’ well. “Store managers have little or no autonomy to buy from local producers, to decide whether a local product might sell well in their store and therefore stock. “As I understand it, producers still have to go through all the hoops of dealing with a buyer at HQ, [and of] how to get their product into the system – this can often mean that food travels a huge distance, just to get back into the store down the road,” Browning said. The second problem is that supermarkets are likely to find it hard to nurture local, small scale suppliers because small producers are simply not able to handle the red tape, she said. “The regulations will stop some, the systems – such as bar-coding, invoicing, and so on – will be beyond many others. Most small local producers will also have little financial fat and if they waste product because the launch is delayed, or product is rejected, for example, due to packaging problems, the hit will be proportionally greater than for bigger players. “I do believe many of the retailers are trying to deal with some of these issues, but it will be tricky. There are big hurdles to surmount, and involve a lot of ‘messing about’ for such [low] volume players.” +04: Recipe: Asparagus Ice-Cream by John Jenkinson We’ve used this recipe for years at the Evesham Hotel, and I’ve never seen it elsewhere. Our former chef Ian Mann says it is good with anything smoked, including of course salmon, and we have had it on the menu with crisp parmesan biscuits (basically just melted parmesan). But it’s equally good on its own, for its own unique flavour. - 1.5 pints milk - 12 egg yolks - 200 grams sugar - 0.5 pints cream - 500 grams asparagus Cook asparagus in salted water, retain tips and purée the remainder. Bring the milk to the boil and pour onto the beaten egg yolks and sugar, return to the saucepan and cook until the mixture thickens, add the asparagus purée and tips and the cream, cool. Churn in an ice- cream mixer. John Jenkinson owns and runs the Evesham Hotel, cited by the Guardian and the Independent among the top 50 British and family- friendly hotels: www.eveshamhotel.com +05: Titbits and Crumbs. British Food Fortnight Coming around again already, the sixth annual British Food Fortnight takes place this autumn from 22 September to 7 October. Visit the website to find out 14 things you can do during the fortnight to advance the cause of British food, plus advice for schools, caterers and chefs: www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk Food Candy Social networking site for foodies or collection of readable food blogs from friendly amateur and professional cooks? A bit of both, and full of tasty snippets: www.foodcandy.com World Carrot Museum Discover the power of carrots: discover why you should eat more, and enjoy carrot-related trivia. Such as that, apparently, Howard Hughes measured every carrot he ate: www.carrotmuseum.co.uk +06: The Drink Spot: Beer’s flavour rainbow by Rupert Ponsonby Matching beers with foods is surprisingly simple, as long as you allow yourself the luxury of choosing from a wide variety of (beer) styles. In fact, it’s a lot easier than matching foods with wine. Just look at the vast range of flavours which encompass that word ‘beer’, words such as citric, marmalade, caramel, chocolate, fruit, sweetcorn, oats, sour rye, vegetal, coriander and bananas. Wine has many of these flavours too; but wine has no charred taste, no sweetcorn and no chocolate, and it is at a disadvantage in terms of the smaller range of alcohol strengths it comes in – 8%-15% as against the 2.8% of Manns Brown Ale and the 25% of Sam Adams Utopias beer. For beer and food matching at its ultimate nerdish pinnacle, you need to take account of your beer’s intensity of flavour, its texture (plus its carbonation and ‘mouthfeel’), colour and appropriate glassware (for the theatre of it), its aromatics and temperature in the glass. But in reality, its basics are very simple: Rule 1 is to match the flavour intensity of the beer to the flavour intensity of the food. Rule 2 is to decide if you want your beer to complement your food, or rather to contrast with it. Complementing means deciding on your food’s flavour hooks (say citrus, sweetness, banana, smoke) and then finding similar flavours in your beer – but beware! matching the flavour intensities of both is vital. Contrasting means finding a beer to highlight or cut into the food: so a lemony beer to accompany your grilled sole, or a cherry beer to partner your choc pud. When I look for a beer to contrast, I do it as though I were choosing a condiment: so if I eat my light cheeses with apples or grapes, I will choose a beer ‘condiment’ with similar floral hop flavours, such as most Southern English bitters; and if for my blue cheese I choose ripe figs or rich chutney, I will simply turn to a 7%abv+ ‘old ale’ with the same ripe plum flavours. Wine has many enemies on the dinner table: artichoke, chocolate, eggs, ice cream, smoked foods, soups, dressed salads, oysters. But these are beer’s friends: artichoke being a good friend to strong spicy Belgian ales or the natural dry spice of a Pilsner; chocolate being a perfect accompaniment to sweet/sour cherry or raspberry beers (normally from Belgium); eggs enjoying the attentions of sulphidey pale ales (a characteristic of Burton on Trent beers); smoked meats being fab with sour brown ales or smoked beers and porters; and oysters with stouts, porters or strong white beers. My beer and food sensations include the following matches: - Raspberry or cherry beers with smooth pork pâtés, foie gras or chocolate puds - Stout and oysters, especially when accompanied by soda bread - Porter or stout with venison - India Pale Ales with assertive foods such as chargrilled steak or tandoors - Barley wine (very hoppy orange-coloured ales of 7%+) and mature cheddar - Old ales (very malty ales, normally dark brown of 7%+) with stilton - Caramel-accented beers with creamy or vanilla-flavoured foods – crème brulée, roast belly pork, chicken satay, devilled kidneys - Lemony lagers or pale ales with scallops or grilled fish. For glassware, use Champagne flutes for lighter coloured beers, red wine glasses for darker beers, and brandy balloons for old ales and barley wines. Pale beers should certainly be chilled, especially wheat beers and lagers; but pale ales benefit from chilling as well, especially if they are to cut into the fatness of the food. Enjoy! - Rupert Ponsonby is is a founder of the Beer Academy, an educational trust dedicated to furthering knowledge and understanding of beer: www.beeracademy.org +07: The food spot: Doorstep package of earthly delights by Zoë Cordy-Simpson. Internet shopping has exploded. Is there anything I can’t buy? But it is not flights I’m after, or a dishwasher, it’s food – delivered to my door. The arrival of the Ocado Man from Waitrose, of ‘You shop, we’ll drop’ from Tesco and of ‘Sainsbury’s to You’ are all a measure of the society we live in. We simply don’t have any time any more. Now, I can sit at my desk and my food arrives in one ultra-convenient delivery. Where is the problem? Well, where is the fun in it? And more importantly, who has decided that the bunch of carrots I have chosen are the freshest, tastiest ones? Or that the pork is a delicious rare-breed. Or that the asparagus is British rather than Peruvian? Not me. The person (or machine) that put them on the van probably is unlikely to care about the umpteen food miles collected along the way. However, all is not lost. Gradually, smaller producers are gathering momentum, coming online and making their presence felt. Cyberspace has opened up a whole wide world of possibilities. Small, independent producers that grow, pick, rear and make their own produce can find a voice that can be heard by a larger audience than they ever could have imagined. While at the same time, people are actually starting to become interested in the provenance of their food. Although I now run an online business, I remember ordering my first vegetable box online and with some trepidation. What would be in it? What would I do with it? Was it really worth it? I’d become quite used to buying fruit and veg in the supermarket – disappointing, yes, but then all the grocers had disappeared. But now choice has re-appeared. When it arrived, all my expectations were surpassed. The variety was superb, the quality was something else. It was all seasonal and British so I didn’t have to worry about stomping my carbon footprint all over the place, and it was deliciously dirty, having been pulled out of the ground the day before. Then there was the challenge that lay before me – what to do with it? It felt like Ready Steady Cook but with the luxury of a little more time to mull over and consider the flavours and options before me. Having (rather satisfyingly) finished the box, I concluded that there wasn’t a better way to eat good food, short of going to the farm or an exceptional farmers’ market myself. I only had to read the high praise this vegetable box received from other people to know I was onto a good thing. I met the farmers – virtually. I could have even talked to them, but I didn’t need to. All the information was at my fingertips and I trusted them implicitly and for the quality and amount I received, it was great value. By choosing to buy from independent producers and researching the food you are buying, you are not only buying into the life-style zeitgeist but you are supporting producers that really care desperately about the food they produce and what ends up on your plate. It may not be quite as convenient as Goliath bringing you everything with one big step, but increasingly, there are companies out there that are actively sourcing the very best quality food and drink from around Britain and bringing it directly to your doorstep. - Zoë Cordy-Simpson is Director of: www.foodfullstop.com . +08: How to: Cook scrumptious sushi rice by Dan Jellinek. Making your own sushi is not as hard as all that, and one of the keys to it is making the lovely sticky, seasoned sushi rice just right. If you have the rice cooked OK, you can try rolling sushi, or you can just eat it in a bowl with a few ingredients like cucumber, raw salmon, japanese pickles and coriander scattered on top – making what is known as ‘scattered sushi’. 1: Measure the rice in 4 level cupfuls, and then wash it three times in cold water, draining each time. I put the rice into a sieve, then lower the sieve into a bowl of cold water, rinse around and drain. Change the water and repeat twice. Each time you will see some of the white starch being washed away, but less and less. 2: Next leave the rice to drain for 30 minutes: there must be no water left in it, so your subsequent measurements of rice to water will be perfect. 3: Place the rice in a saucepan with five level cupfuls of water. The best pan to use is a lidded, non-stick pan with a thin base – it is more responsive to heat adjustments. 4: Cover the rice, then bring to boil quickly on a high heat and boil for two minutes. Turn down to the low side of medium for five minutes, then the lowest heat possible for eight minutes. Finally, turn off the heat and leave it, covered, for a further 10 minutes. You are not supposed to uncover it for any of this, and just go by sound: though unless you have a glass lid, the odd little sneak peek is inevitable. 5: Once ready, take a wooden spatula and scrape into a large shallow dish. Spread it out and pour just under a cupful of sushi vinegar evenly over the rice (this Japanese vinegar seasoned with salt and sugar can be bought ready-mixed from specialist shops). Mix well, then stand the dish up on one side and cool with an electric fan, mixing occasionally. Switch off fan when cool. Use immediately or keeps for a few hours covered with a wet tea-cloth. Do not refrigerate. Yum! - With thanks to my sushi teacher Mike Dodd, executive head chef at Brighton’s best sushi restaurant Okinami: www.okinami.com . +09: Friends of Scoff! - A Select Directory of Our Friends and Helpers. - Averys, one of the UK’s most respected wine merchants, is offering our readers a £10 discount on all new orders over £49.95: http://www.averys.com/scoff - All About Wine is a seminal book covering all the basics about enjoying wine from our Drinks Editor Jonathan Ray. Scoff! readers benefit from a special price of £17.99 inc. p&p: call Macmillan Direct on 01256 302 692 and quote GLR D47. - Planet Chicken, the well-received expose on the state of the modern poultry industry from our editorial consultant Hattie Ellis, is out now from Hodder & Stoughton. For discount offers buy online at Amazon.co.uk. - The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard, “contemporary European recipes for the home baker,” is published by Mitchell Beazley. Special Scoff! price £16: call 01903 828503 quoting PUB195. - Wendy Brandon Handmade Preserves is a small company making a very wide range of jams, marmalades and chutneys: http://www.wendybrandon.co.uk/ - We are grateful to Oregon Wines for providing us with our October competition prize. For more information on the wines of Oregon visit: http://www.oregonwines.com - Another generous prize came courtesy of New Zealand Winegrowers. To find out about New Zealand tastings in your area email info@winzuk.com And for more on NZ wine see: www.nzwine.com - Try the ‘Curious Brew’ beer brand from award-winning wine producer Chapel Down. Curious Brew Brut, Cobb IPA and Admiral Porter can be ordered with online discounts from: www.chapeldownwines.co.uk NOTE: Inclusion in this directory is free, but you must help to increase our readership! To find out more contact Jo Weatherall on jo@gastronomail.com . +10: Fruity Summer Offer. Our summer offer is a fantastic giveaway in partnership with Villa Maria, New Zealand’s largest privately-owned wine company and the country’s most awarded wine producer. A pioneer of the screwcap closure, all Villa Maria wines have been sealed with screwcaps since 2002 to guard against cork taint and oxidation. Our prize is a box of six bottles of Villa Maria Private Bin East Coast Chardonnay 2006, normally priced at £6.99 and stocked in Asda, Somerfield, Oddbins and Tesco (from August 2007). Fresh and fruit- driven in style, this wine displays ripe stone fruit and citrus blossom aromas, with creamy characteristics and a slight nuttiness on the finish: great with Summer salads and fish dishes. All you have to do to enter is email your name, address and telephone number to dan@gastronomail.com including the email addresses of at least one friend or colleague who has agreed to sign up to receive future issues of Scoff! (NB we will check their agreement!) One email address of a new reader is all you need to enter – but the more you supply, the better your chances. Last month’s winner was Mike Bazett of Sussex (pictured right), who secured six bottles of Pinot Noir from Oregon, courtesy of Oregon Wines. Mike maximised his chances of securing the prize by signing up 10 colleagues from his workplace. Why don’t you do the same? Deadline is 17 August. Good luck! And for more info on Villa Maria, visit www.villamariaestate.co.uk . ++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 2006 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.]