Taste not waste,

This post is a bit like a recipe, a bringing together of different ingredients and ideas to produce something bigger than the sum of its parts - or at least that's the plan; let's see how it turns out.  It is an amalgam of Januaryism -  miserable weather (it is snowing and raining as I write), still eating the Christmas leftovers, the nagging thought that we should be dieting but its too cold to contemplate restricting our calorie intake, discarded resolutions, scary credit card bills and even scarier bank balances - and a recurrent theme circulating in the media; #tastenotwaste, ie how not to throw food away.

I recently heard the following statistics on Radio 4, and this old Guardian report is roughly concurrent:
In 1957 we spent 33% of our income on food and 9% on housing
It's now 16% on food and 18% on housing.
In other words, we have doubled the proportion of our income spent on keeping a roof over our heads and halved the proportion filling our bellies.

This opens so many cans of worms that you could probably compost our annual food waste in less time than the average wait in A&E for an avocado stone injury.
But this is not an academic treatise, nor am I an economist, so we will leave that discussion to others in more rarified environments than this blog.  But the allusions to food waste and avocados were coincidental; they were prompted by Felicity Cloake's delightfully debunking piece in which she helpfully suggests that avocado flour is "best left to the prehistoric sloth", this in itself being a reference to this article, which, to complete the circle, references "avocado hand".
Having cheerfully dismissed the benefits of avocado flour, Felicity gets down to some much more attractive ways to reduce food waste. She is a clever writer with an ability to cut to the heart of a topic with surgical precision and a devastatingly honed wit.

An upbringing in a less than wealthy Yorkshire household has led me to view food waste as shameless profligacy; each discarded piece of still edible food an act of wantonness akin to "pouring money down the drain"


This is where, for me it all starts to get a bit complicated. Indulge me please, before I share Netherton's own tips and tricks for using up leftover food and a new recipe.

In my opinion there are 2 significant factors at play here and its hard to determine which comes first; a case of the "best before" egg and the "use by" chicken.
So let's start with date labelling.  
Date labelling of food items was introduced in 1950 by Marks and Spencer as a means of stock control and wasn't used as a sell by date until 1973; there has even been speculation that these dates are used by manufacturers to encourage waste and additional expenditure.
Of course, buying habits have changed in the last 40 years to reflect other changes in our daily lives and few people shop on a daily basis or even once a week, so there is something to be said for date labelling.
However, as you have probably worked out, I am with Rose Eveleth on this one;
"...it's probably safe to say that you can ignore whatever date's printed on your food and go for a simple sniff test."

Which brings me to the second factor; a fundamental lack of food education, knowledge and confidence.  As a nation we have lost our connection with food at its most basic.  On Desert Island Discs  recently Angela Hartnett opined that Britain is not a foodie nation; it's not enough to boast some Michelin starred chefs, restaurants listed among the world's best and TV cookery programmes 24/7 when so many households are eating ready meals and takeaways.  I found myself nodding in agreement as she described the domestic cookery of the UK unfavourably with that of Italy. If you have read this blog in the past you will already know what I think of the teaching of food technology in our schools.  Nothing in the curriculum gives kids the confidence to judge for themselves whether or not their yogurt is safe to eat despite what it says on the lid.  Sensationalised reporting of food scares has eroded any confidence their parents may have had and they are growing up to be wary of food, not excited by it.
There is a massive difference between cutting a mouldy crust off a stale loaf of bread and using the remainder for toast or breadcrumbs (never throw stale bread away, you can use it for so many things) and eating undercooked chicken that smells a bit off but isn't green of furry.  The first will harm no-one, the second is salmonella in waiting!
I know that the chances are that if you are reading this, you already know that.  My personal observation is that most people don't, so they throw far too much away.
This doubt/ignorance , together with a restrictive, unimaginative curriculum in schools is one of the key contributing factors to the levels of food waste we are currently witnessing.
Fundamentally, the majority of people simply have no basic understanding of food, cooking and nutrition and it is not their fault.
I don't intend to be sanctimonious and preachy here, I just think we have lost sight of the essentials.
This, to me is such an important topic, way beyond anything I can hope to convey or achieve here.  
I would be very interested to hear your views on this subject.

OK - rant over, here are the Netherton money-saving, food-saving, waste-reducing, flavour-shaking tips:

Brown bananas;
Make banana bread, smoothies and milk shakes or chuck them in your porridge.
Alternatively freeze them for use at a later date in any of the above ideas or remove from the freezer and blitz with a stick mixer for dairy free, sugar free, instant ice cream.
Slice them, dip them in melted chocolate and freeze for bite sized banana choc ices.

Wrinkly apples:
Quarter, core and fry in butter and brown sugar and serve with clotted cream
peel and grate into salads and cake mix.
Core, stuff with raisins and brown sugar and bake in the oven

Limp veg:
As long as your veg have not started to decompose into primeval slime you can chop them up and turn them into soup.  These are generally known here as botbot soup - BitOfThisBitOfThat.
Or add a can of beans or any cheap cut of meat and slow cook for a delicious stew.

Egg whites and yolks:
Egg whites freeze well, so if you have been making custard and don't fancy whipping up a batch of meringues or macarons at the same time, save the whites for another baking day.
Egg yolks are of course essential to custard, Hollandaise and mayonnaise, so get your sauce on!

Eat leaves and shoots - with apologies to Lynne Truss
Cauliflower and beetroot leaves are delicious; broccoli stems are edible, chop them up and add them to soups; tuck into celery leaves as an addition to an omelette.

Citrus fruits:
If you are about to eat an orange, finely grate the zest first and add to a jar of sugar.  Use for puddings, custards and cakes*
If you need the juice of a lemon, zest it first and keep the grated zest in the freezer for enlivening soups, cakes, curries................
And if life gives you lemons in abundance and no time to make lemonade, freeze the grated zest, then freeze the juice in ice cube trays.  

And please, please if there is a neglected fruit tree or bramble hedge near you - harvest the fruit, do not let it go to waste.

Finally, having used half a pack of dried figs and a bottle of wine we weren't keen on to make  Nigel Slater's fig liqueur, I then created a recipe centred around the ambrosial amber liquid and some stale, but not mouldy, fairy cakes.  Think fig trifle meets Queen of Puddings.

5 stale fairy cakes or slices of leftover sponge cake, crumbled.
Some boozy dried fruit, if you've got it.  Otherwise, soak your dried fruit of choice in port, sherry, apple or orange juice for about an hour.
2 tablespoons of sweet wine, sherry or brandy (optional, but sensational)
250ml full fat milk
3 dessertspoons orange sugar* 
2 eggs.

Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC
Lightly grease a 1lb loaf tin.
Put the broken up cake and the dried fruit in the bottom of the loaf tin.
Pour over your booze of choice - I used the figs and the delicious fennel and maple syrup wine from the Nigel Slater recipe.
Pour the milk into a pan and heat gently to just below boiling.
Whisk the eggs and sugar together and then add the warm milk.  You can use your normal sugar, with or without the addition of some grated orange zest if you haven't got a stash of orange sugar in the cupboard.
Pour this custard over the cake and fruit and place the loaf tin in the oven.
Cook for around 20 minutes, until just set.
Serve warm, not hot.

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©

Chicken Kyiv nuggets

What happens when you cross a chicken Kyiv with a chicken nugget?

A mouthful of moreishness, that's what.

This is yet another excuse to use the bountiful harvest of wild garlic that is springing up already.
I figured it would go really well with chicken and having demolished a chicken and bacon sandwich with wild garlic mayonnaise, 

I struck upon the idea of  incorporating it into a chicken nugget, turning a children's favourite into something a little more sophisticated.

In total I used 2 chicken breast fillets, 3 slices of Parma ham with a single leaf of wild garlic for each nugget.
This made 15 nuggets, so adjust the quantities to suit your family/appetite/occasion.

You will need:
Skinned chicken breast
Parma ham
Cream cheese
Wild garlic
Flour
Egg
Fresh breadcrumbs*
Oil

* whenever you have any bread that is starting to go stale, turn it into breadcrumbs and throw in the freezer - they will always come in handy for topping a macaroni cheese, making fish fingers, turning into Queen of Puddings and a myriad other uses #wastenot

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces.
Spread a little cream cheese onto each wild garlic leaf.  (You can omit this if you don't want the faff)
Wrap a garlic leaf around each nugget and then wrap the Parma ham around that - you only need enough ham to go round the nugget. 

Have 4 plates ready;

Put the flour on one, crack the egg on to the second and beat lightly, the third is for the breadcrumbs and the final one for the assembled nuggets.

Roll each nugget in flour, dip into the egg and then coat with breadcrumbs. Transfer to a clean plate and then refrigerate for an hour.

Heat the oil over a medium heat in a wok or large frying pan - you can deep or shallow fry these. When the oil is hot enough to brown a cube of bread within a minute, add the nuggets in small batches - do not overcrowd the pan.

Turn regularly until golden brown on all sides and for no less than 3 minutes to ensure the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Drain and serve - particularly delicious with a lemon mayonnaise to dip them in.

 © Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

A perspective on what we eat

More of the waste not campaign, the sugar tax and the environment.....

A bit of a rant.

I have been spurred into finishing this post, by a fantastic piece in today's Observer by Eva Wiseman and all the publicity about the huge amount of sugar in the oversized, mucked about with coffee and chocolate drinks served up by the well known coffee shop chains.

When I was a teenager, we were all urged to lose weight by swapping to saccharine tablets in our drinks which, quite frankly, were vile.  They left a nasty chemical aftertaste and persuaded me that tea and coffee drunk without sugar was the way to go.
But swapping to unadulterated hot drinks - I also like my coffee black - did not remove my sweet tooth entirely and a nice shortbread (made with sugar AND butter AND gluten laden flour) is always welcome.

Things have progressed and the new sweeteners taste far better than those of the 70s.
BUT,  sugar is entirely natural, unlike the chemical cocktails of the alternatives. And as far as I am aware, the side effects of sensible consumption of sugar are significantly less scary than those attributed to aspartame.
My concern about taxing sugary drinks is that it does not really address the heart of the problem, which is that our tastes and our eating habits have changed and this is what we need to be looking at.
It's no good imposing a tax on fizzy pop, if the choice is a sugar free drink and a giant sized chocolate bar.
And what about sweets, cake, all the savoury foods which contain sugar - baked beans- biscuits, ice cream, breakfast cereal...... Need I go on?

Unless we re-educate kids', and even adults', palates then there is little to be gained in taxing fizzy drinks.

My children didn't even know that sugary cereals existed til they went to their first Cub camp. They started on Weetabix and got used to so called adult cereal.

I'd rather they had squash with sugar and cleaned their teeth than risked panic attacks with aspartame laced versions.

And while I am on my soapbox, can I bring up portion sizes?  Being overweight is as much to do with how much you eat as what you eat.
Portion sizes have grown and grown - last week my teenage daughter and I indulged in fish and chips from the local chippie.  We had one portion of cod and chips between us and couldn't eat all of it.
The so called "scandal" of the over sugared coffee drinks need to be put into perspective too - the statistics that were quoted related to the large drinks - who needs a PINT of coffee anyway?

All of this adds to the growing issue of food waste.  We choose larger portions, we are served larger portions and quite often we scoff the lot, but sometimes our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and what seemed like a good idea suddenly feels like a mountain to climb and a pile of food goes untouched.

 There are, of course other issues associated with food waste and page upon page has been written about this.
In my opinion, whilst laudable, it's not enough to tell people not to throw away their food when they have no idea where it comes from and what to do with it.

We really need to find a way to get back to basics with our food education.

Trust your senses...does it look ok? Does it smell ok?

Buy fresh from the market, local specialist or farm shop. Ask the retailer or producer about their produce, don't rely on a printed label.

What's wrong with a little mould on the rind of a cheese when we are happy to eat Stilton? Cut it off, grate the remainder and put it in a cheese sauce.

I am not advocating risking salmonella, but I do feel that we should be teaching all generations more about their food, so they can make informed choices about what they eat and how they eat.

We have Scouts who won't touch raw food, don't recognise basic fruit and vegetables and certainly can distinguish between beef and lamb.

I recently taught them how to make baked beans and they...and our scout leader... genuinely didn't realise you could make them at home.

We lead increasingly busy lives, but that's no excuse not to appreciate good food, to shop sensibly and eat wisely and well.
Can we get rid of the notion of  "good and bad" food.

Sure we cannot live on cakes and chips, but food should be a delight, not a chore.  Moderation and exercise can compensate for the occasional chocolate mousse and glass of red wine.

I am worried about the concept of clean eating and guilty pleasures, which can so easily distort our view of eating and enjoyment and result in eating disorders and obsessions.

It's a long way back to where we used to be in our relationship with food, but we need to look forward to find a way to reconnect and to truly relish and enjoy our food. Maybe the current interest in paleo diets and bone broth, aka stock, will trigger more interest.

An understanding and appreciation of food and a knowledge of where it comes from , how to cook it and what it does for us is surely the starting point in the approach to tackling food poverty, malnourishment, obesity and anorexia.

Remember the Sophia Loren quote.......Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.

But it's not just about the food we eat, it's how we cook it and what we cook it in.
We seem to have become a notion fascinated by TV chefs, clamouring for the latest celebrity cookery series or the competitiveness  of GBBO and Masterchef.
But truth be told, once in the kitchen, we become assemblers, with the addition of a jar of pre-cooked sauce to a pan of pasta being regarded as cooking and therefore not  dishing up convenience food.

Just how many people read what goes into this sauces - often too much salt and sugar and a great many fillers.
So many of them can be made better and cheaper and just as quickly from scratch.

So if we can educate people to cook better and learn about where their food has come from and what goes into it, then the next step is to look at the cookware we use.

This is a very long and worrying article, from the NY Times and it may make you think twice before buying another non stick pan.
And don't forget, the first time that you used a chemically coated pan, is the best it will ever be, as continued use will degrade and erode the coating and, as it cannot be restored, the only solution is to buy a new pan.
Ours are naturally coated with Sussex grown flax oil ....

....and if I'm being totally honest, the first time you use is the worst it will be, but the patina and non stick properties will get better and better over time and in the event of a culinary disaster, they can be scrubbed back and restored.

If you look at them in terms of pence per use over the lifetime of the pan, you will realise what good value they are.

 © Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Apples - waste not

If you have been following our social media, you'll know that we have signed up to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's War on Waste not campaign.  Please take the time to sign up if you agree with what he is trying to achieve

We have always been keen on the reuse/restore/recycle mantra and of course, our cookware is designed with long life and sustainability in mind.

The flax oil coating can be restored again and again, so there is no need to throw away your cookware. what's more we offer a full range of spares, so you can sort out any minor problems.

You may also have seen that we are lucky enough to have some heavy cropping apple trees in our garden and the route between home and workshops is lined with wild fruit trees.

Kate has expressed more succinctly and eloquently than I could hope to, the view that food education is a key factor in the throw away culture in which we live.

I agree wholeheartedly with what she says and regularly rant about this from the dizzying heights of my personal soap box.  I urge you to read and comment on her beautifully written and well set out blog post.

I am on a personal mission to educate our scout group about food in general, alongside teaching them to cook something more sustaining than cup cakes.So many of them are reluctant to touch raw meat and have no idea how to prepare veg.

Enough of the moralising..... what did I do with all the apples from our trees this year?

Chutneys - beetroot and apple, using up some slightly wrinkled beets, and a spicy apple chutney based on a recipe in my battered copy of Jams, pickles and chutneys, which I've mentioned before and which is sadly out of print.

Crumbles, pies and cakes..... More on pies in a new blog coming soon.

Bags full of chopped apples stored in the freezer

Apple sauce to go with the pulled pork posted last week....

Added to red cabbage with juniper, cider and brown sugar and simmer for ages
......and juice.

and this is how I made my own, delicious Howgate Wonder apple juice

Quarter the apples, no need to peel or core

Put in a pan - just choose the right size for the number of apples you've got.

On this occasion I had so many that I used my trusty old pressure cooker, the biggest pan in my kitchen

Add water to the level of the apples and simmer until the apples fall apart.

Press through a sieve, until all you have left are skin and pips.

Then strain the pulp through a muslin.

                            

You will now have a bowl full of juice and cloth full of purée.

Return the juice to a pan and add sugar to taste, our apples, Howgate Wonders are quite sweet already so I only added 2 Tblsp sugar to 3 litres of juice.

Bring to the boil, making sure the sugar is dissolved.

Allow to cool and either bottle or pour into jugs and store in the fridge.

Won't keep for long, so enjoy it while it lasts

And as for the purée, what about a special apple pie...........recipe coming soon.

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2015

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk