Bad News for Coeliacs
The report on the price of sugar is bad for coeliacs like me. What will happen is that more food will use wheat glucose instead of sugar, because it’s cheaper. Unfortunately, a lot of coeliacs can’t handle this and it makes them ill.
Interestingly, the EU says that wheat glucose is alright for coeliacs to eat, so products don’t have to say they contain gluten.
Well, here’s one who’s affected by wheat glucose (maltodextrin). I am not alone!
Food Shortages
Isn’t the best way to cut food shortages, to cut the birthrate? Then we should make sure people aren’t overweight and obese.
But this report today is a typical overreaction of a government that wants to frighten us all to do their bidding. Engineers and scientists will solve the problem, just like they have every great crisis in the past. And I suspect that we can do it without using GM crops to any great extent.
There is talk that we’ll be have a more vegetarian diet. I’m afraid that would be a severe problem for me, as all of the cereals I can eat are generally imported.
Jamie Oliver’s Fish Pie
I like this recipe as except for the potato saucepan, there isn’t too much washing up and most of the preparation is done in the dish you cook it in. It’s also very gluten-free without any dodgy ingredient at all.
Here’s what Jamie says about it.
This is a fantastically simple fish pie which doesn’t involve poaching the fish or making a tedious white sauce. Loads of good, fragrant veg are added quickly by grating them in. You can use whatever fish you like, making this as luxurious as you want it to be. If you like your fish pie to be creamy, feel free to add a few tablespoons of crème fraîche to the fish.
For four people and a typical deep dish you’ll get in somewhere like Debenhams, you’ll need the following.
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1kg potatoes
- 1 carrot
- 2 sticks of celery
- 150g good Cheddar cheese
- 1 lemon
- ½ a fresh red chilli
- 4 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 300g salmon fillets, skin off and bones removed
- 300g undyed smoked haddock fillets, skin off and bones removed
- 125g king prawns, raw, peeled
- Olive oil
- Optional: a good handful of spinach, chopped
- Optional: a couple of ripe tomatoes, quartered
Note that Waitrose will take the skin of the fish. I suspect other places and of course real fishmongers will too.
This is the method.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and bring a large pan of salted water to the boil
- Peel the potatoes and cut into 2cm chunks
- Once the water is boiling, add your potatoes and cook for around 12 minutes, until soft (you can stick your knife into them to check)
- Meanwhile, get yourself a deep baking tray or earthenware dish and stand a box grater in it
- Peel the carrot
- Grate the celery, carrot and Cheddar on the coarse side of the grater
- Use the fine side of the grater to grate the zest from the lemon
- Finely grate or chop your chilli
- Finely chop the parsley leaves and stalks and add these to the tray
- Cut the salmon and smoked haddock into bite-size chunks and add to the tray with the prawns
- Squeeze over the juice from the zested lemon (no pips please!), drizzle with olive oil and add a good pinch of salt and pepper
- If you want to add any spinach or tomatoes, do it now
- Mix everything together really well
- By now your potatoes should be cooked, so drain them in a colander and return them to the pan
- Drizzle with a couple of good lugs of olive oil and add a pinch of salt and pepper
- Mash until nice and smooth, then spread evenly over the top of the fish and grated veg
- Place in the preheated oven for around 40 minutes, or until cooked through, crispy and golden on top
Serve piping hot with tomato ketchup, baked beans, steamed veg or a lovely green salad.
I would just point this recipe to Jamie’s site, but I like to print out the recipes as I have a bad memory. And it doesn’t print from his site on my machine.
Haggis Scottish? No! It’s English
This story from England, that claims that haggis was an English dish, won’t go down well with the Scots.
Historian Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called The English Hus-Wife. The title would pre-date Robert Burns’ poem To A Haggis, which brought fame to the delicacy, by at least 171 years.
But it does seem feasible.
Organic Food?
There has been a report that says that organic food is no better than non-organic. I probably agree, but then I use it in most of my cooking.
So why?
Take my chilli con carne, that I cooked last night. I use lean organic beef as that is better for me because of its leanness. I also feel strongly that animals should be kept well and that some sort of mark like Organic, means that higher levels of husbandry are used. In fact, I think that near-organic beef is better, as farmers who grow quality beef say that the organic rules are not always to the animals best health and make the product too expensive.
Anyway, the chilli con carne was great!
Economics of Home Cooking
I cooked a pan load of chilli con carne last night using the recipe on this blog.
The kilo of organic lean beef mince from Waitrose cost just under £10, the organic beans and tomatoes another three and if you add in the herbs, wine and spices then the total is under £20. Obviously, using cheaper ingredients could cut this cost. In fact when I made the previous batch a few weeks ago, I used some of the same organic mince, which was just about to go past its sell-by date. It cost just £6. So I always look for more of this, as lean meat is good for my cholesterol.
I make the chilli con carne in one large saucepan, so it really isn’t a great problem for washing up either!
I reckon that for my £20 or less, I get eight portions of about 400 grams each. Last night we ate three large portions with microwaveable rice and the rest I froze in one double and two single ones.
So each organic chilli con carne, with lean beef, lots of spices and included wine cost me £2.50. That’s about £6.25 a kilo.
Perhaps this is expensive, but it is very simple to do and I could cut the cost to about £1.50 (£4.25 a kilo), by using less expensive beef, cheap plonk and ordinary kidney beans and tomatoes.
A look on Waitrose‘s web site shows that they have a prepared chilli con carne at £5.98 a kilo.
Is mine better? Don’t know! But I suspect it has more meat in it and being a coeliac I know that it is totally gluten-free.
Are Restaurants Getting Better?
On Sunday, I went up to London and had a very good meal, risotto followed by liver, in the Camden Brasserie. And yesterday, I went to the Bull and Bush in Hampstead. There it was a steak with a pint of Aspalls cyder.
The point about both these restaurants is that neither would claim to be particular allergy-friendly and don’t say as much on the web site, but they both know about allergies and checked my order with the chef.
Writing twenty-four hours later, I have had no reaction.
So I would recommend these places to everybody; coeliacs or not.
Moroccan Chicken Casserole
This is something I wouldn’t have cooked, as if asked I would have said that I didn’t like apricots. But it was very nice. As I cooked it late at night, I actually froze it in four small pots and have only ate it after defrosting in the AGA.
The great advantage for me about this recipe is that it only uses one saucepan.
I got it from Crazy Squirrel.
You will need the following for four.
- 8 Chicken thighs – I used 4 breasts cut in half
- 2 Onions, chopped
- 2cm piece Root ginger, finely chopped
- 1 tsp Paprika
- 1 tsp Turmeric
- 180g Dried apricots
- 500ml Chicken stock – I made a gluten-free stock from a Marigold bouillon powder
- Salt and freshly ground Black pepper
And this is how you make it.
- In a large saucepan fry the chicken thighs over a high heat until brown all over (approximately 10 minutes).
- Add the onion and spices and fry for a further 5 minutes until the onion has softened.
- Add the remaining ingredients, mix well and simmer for 20 minutes. Serve immediately.
It is very simple.
Shopping for One
I tend to cook meals in fours. Tonight, I’ve cooked four Moroccan chicken casseroles, of which I’ve frozen three and put one in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch. I’m having a big lunch as I’m going racing and then watching Status Quo at Newmarket. (I still have a spare ticket, if anyone is interested!)
One of the reasons, I cook in fours, is that it is such a waste buying food for just one meal. Either you have to eat the same thing, two or even three days running, or throw most of it away.
Things I don’t like include :-
- Two for one or three for two deals. They are no cheaper for me, as the second one goes off before I can buy it.
- Meat usual comes in packs of two. So I have to buy two and put one in the freezer. Then I forget to get it out and have lots there. Then the freezer goes off and it’s all ruined. Grr!
- The lack of small sizes. There are some gluten-free pretzels that I like. No supermarket stocks the small size, so I eat too many if I buy a packet.
- Recipes that are made for four. OK, my maths is good, but can we have more recipes for one.
- I’ve got lots and lots of small packets of spices. Smaller ones would be better.
I do wonder whether the reason some people are obese, is that they live alone and buy too much!
It’s not that I’m unique in living alone. There are about 7,000,000 of us in the UK. So please can we have sensible sizes of food and other goods. If nothing it will cut down waste.
Maharajah Restaurant, Cambridge
Last night, I went to this pleasant little Indian restaurant just outside Cambridge city centre on Castle Hill.
The service was quick and the food was good. And of course it was gluten-free, as it is in most Indian restaurants.
The Anonymous Widower 