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| Image: Freefoto.com |
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The push for Christmas perfection
I'm just back from enjoying a friend's Christmas ale (brewed with nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves) and home-baked bread, including another guest's Christmas fruity walnut and beer bread. This was a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, (this version made with a mix of Red Stripe and coconut porter, apparently) and was absolutely delicious. No kneading or rising time required - I'll be making it myself as soon as I get a chance.
On the subject of Christmas television cookery programmes, I always have a burst of initial enthusiasm, only to start feeling slightly exhausted by them at some point in December.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The celebrity chefs and the supermarkets
Most of us take it for granted that a bit of home cooking is generally healthier than buying a supermarket ready-meal.
But not if you follow the recipes of some of our celebrity chefs, according to a study in the British Medical Journal that has made some headlines today. The study, which looked at 100 recipes by celebrity chefs and 100 supermarket ready meals, found that the recipes scored worse on calories, sugar, fat and saturated fat.
It's not a perfect study - it only looked at five cookery books, the top-sellers in December 2010, so the recipes aren't the most recent ones, and only four chefs are represented (Jamie Oliver had two best selling books at the time).
But not if you follow the recipes of some of our celebrity chefs, according to a study in the British Medical Journal that has made some headlines today. The study, which looked at 100 recipes by celebrity chefs and 100 supermarket ready meals, found that the recipes scored worse on calories, sugar, fat and saturated fat.
It's not a perfect study - it only looked at five cookery books, the top-sellers in December 2010, so the recipes aren't the most recent ones, and only four chefs are represented (Jamie Oliver had two best selling books at the time).
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| Jamie Oliver |
Saturday, July 16, 2011
A load of tripe
Did anyone see The North on a Plate the other night? It was pretty good actually - though you could tell it was on BBC4 (lots of talk of terroir and references to Rousseau).
Tripe played a starring role in the programme. I never knew that there were actually four different types of tripe - one for each stomach of the cow. They have great names - blanket or smooth type, honeycomb/pocket tripe, leaf/book tripe, and reed tripe.
At Bolton market you can buy it ready to eat. People eat it cold and sprinkled with vinegar, though presenter Andrew Hussey didn't even attempt this. Bolton used to have a chain of restaurants called UCP (United Cattle Products), specialising in tripe. For some reason these restaurants no longer exist.
Does anyone eat tripe any more? Lots of other countries do. In Florence, for example, they love it and eat it from street stalls. Particularly popular is lampredotto, which is reed tripe from the fourth stomach, which is softer and outside Florence, not eaten as much as the others.
Last year the Scottish government spent £300,000 on promoting tripe, including a new guide for meat processors on how to harvest it from the carcass. Apparently offal, cheeks and such like are known in the meat trade as "the fifth quarter". Quality Meat Scotland, which was behind this initiative, says that between 2008 and 2010 the Scottish meat industry turned the £2.2 million cost of disposing of non-carcass parts into a £13.3 million revenue stream. I'm not sure whether this is because of a rush in demand for tripe, or because they were doing something else with it - selling it for dog food or fertiliser, maybe.
Let me know what you think about tripe...
Tripe played a starring role in the programme. I never knew that there were actually four different types of tripe - one for each stomach of the cow. They have great names - blanket or smooth type, honeycomb/pocket tripe, leaf/book tripe, and reed tripe.
At Bolton market you can buy it ready to eat. People eat it cold and sprinkled with vinegar, though presenter Andrew Hussey didn't even attempt this. Bolton used to have a chain of restaurants called UCP (United Cattle Products), specialising in tripe. For some reason these restaurants no longer exist.
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| Sorry about the disgusting picture! Photo by Charles Roffey |
Does anyone eat tripe any more? Lots of other countries do. In Florence, for example, they love it and eat it from street stalls. Particularly popular is lampredotto, which is reed tripe from the fourth stomach, which is softer and outside Florence, not eaten as much as the others.
Last year the Scottish government spent £300,000 on promoting tripe, including a new guide for meat processors on how to harvest it from the carcass. Apparently offal, cheeks and such like are known in the meat trade as "the fifth quarter". Quality Meat Scotland, which was behind this initiative, says that between 2008 and 2010 the Scottish meat industry turned the £2.2 million cost of disposing of non-carcass parts into a £13.3 million revenue stream. I'm not sure whether this is because of a rush in demand for tripe, or because they were doing something else with it - selling it for dog food or fertiliser, maybe.
Let me know what you think about tripe...
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| Tripe |
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